Do Not Go Gentle
by SenLinYu
Summary: In Eighth Year, Hermione discovers she’s dying from a curse cast during her torture at Malfoy Manor. It’s been slowly killing her for months. Professor Snape, an embittered and scarred survivor, begrudgingly offers to pursue a cure for her while she remains a student at Hogwarts. She decides to accept. Severus/Hermione.
1. One

_Author's Note: This story follows Hermione as she struggles to cope emotionally with a terminal curse. It is not intended as a moral story. It is simply a story. There are some elements loosely based on the end of life behavior of a close friend, and some of my own experiences dealing with chronic illness, but it is primarily its own story exploring a set of circumstances that people react to in very unique ways. There is no major character death in this story, but the ending is left partially ambiguous._

_This story sprang from a tumblr prompt several months back and then grew and grew uncontrollably into a 30k word fic. Let that be a lesson to me._

_Prompt: sevmione with snape taking care of an injured/sick hermione_

_Alpha and Beta work by Jamethiel, who patiently let me whinge endlessly to her about it on all the occasions when I got stuck._

**~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~**

_**Do not go gentle into that good night. **_

_**Rage, rage against the dying of the light.**_

_**~Dylan Thomas**_

* * *

It was subtle at first. For the first several months, she assumed it was merely the stress of the war; for the next several months, she assumed it was the stress of the trials; then when winter approached, she assumed it was stress from school.

She kept assuming it was stress until she was walking to the cabinet to retrieve her supplies for Potions class and the walls began closing in, wobbling and swallowing her up.

When she woke again, she was in the Hogwarts hospital ward.

Severus Snape stood at her bedside, staring down at her with an expression of profound irritation.

"Did you never consider having that injury on your arm examined by a professional?" he asked, as she sat up in bed.

His voice was low and rasping. His throat had been permanently damaged from Nagini's bite.

Hermione looked down at the still raw wound carved into her forearm. Mudblood.

The bandages she kept wound carefully around her arm to cover it had been removed.

It was bleeding again.

It never stopped bleeding, no matter what she did to try to staunch it.

She turned her arm to hide the ragged incisions from view. "Fleur treated it. She said it was cursed not to heal. It's not very deep, and I keep it clean. It didn't seem worth making a fuss about."

His lip curled into a derisive sneer. "It's killing you."

Hermione stared at him blankly, feeling as though he'd stepped forward and struck her. Her lungs wouldn't take any oxygen, her throat closed, and she just looked at him.

After a moment, she looked back down at her arm again and drew a stuttering breath.

Somehow, even though she hadn't considered it, she felt strangely unsurprised.

She was so tired. She couldn't remember when she'd last enjoyed eating, or read a book without developing a migraine, or been able to summon a sense of excitement about anything.

Everything had required effort for so long, she'd gotten used to it.

Now as she sat in bed thinking about it, it had all started after Malfoy Manor. That was when everything had begun getting increasingly difficult and painful.

It was hard to make herself think about Malfoy Manor. Hermione preferred not to if she could possibly help it.

If Hermione hadn't been tortured there, they wouldn't have realised Bellatrix had Hufflepuff's Cup. If Hermione hadn't been tortured, Harry wouldn't have disarmed Draco Malfoy and gained the loyalty of the Elder Wand.

They would have lost the war.

Malfoy Manor had been a vital necessity. A tipping point in the war.

Dobby had died.

Hermione hadn't been conscious when Dobby died. She'd only found out afterwards when she woke and heard that Harry was digging a grave.

Harry often talked about Dobby's death. It was one of the most deeply significant events of the entire war for him. When Malfoy Manor was brought up, Dobby was the first person Harry referred to. Sometimes he would belatedly mention that Hermione had been brilliant and lied under torture.

But Dobby's death was the most important aspect of that day. It was the tragedy.

Torture was a distant second, and one that Harry and everyone else preferred not to acknowledge as having happened at all.

Hermione never felt as though there were any context in which it was acceptable to bring up a cut on her arm that kept bleeding.

She was lucky to have just been tortured. A lot of other people had died.

She stared across the room at the white dividing curtain for several seconds as she sat absorbing it all.

"I suppose it's not reversible, is it?" she finally asked.

"It's not intended to be."

She nodded slowly. lf Snape was telling her that she was going to die, she probably was. Otherwise she would have woken in St Mungo's.

"How long do I have?"

"If you bother to take your health seriously, you might manage to last a year." His voice was cold.

Her skin prickled painfully. Her organs were shriveling, and she thought she might throw up.

Her heart was beginning to pound and, as a result, all the little cuts on her arm had started to throb. They always throbbed, as though she had a pulse-point there. When her heartbeat sped up, the throbbing would reflect it. All the precisely carved letters in her arm would start to bleed.

She'd gotten into the habit of ignoring the throbbing, or pressing her palm lightly against it. Sometimes the pressure and warmth of her hand helped.

As she sat stiffly in the hospital bed, trying not to have an emotional breakdown in front of a professor who had never regarded her existence as anything but a nuisance, several streams of blood started making their way towards her wrist.

Her blood was thin and watery looking. Somehow in the midst of all the effort that it took to complete her homework and make it to class, she hadn't noticed

She didn't know why Madam Pomfrey or Headmistress McGonagall couldn't be the ones telling her that she was probably going to die before she turned twenty.

Her eyes burned, and she had to blink in order to keep her vision clear. She had decided after the war that she wasn't going to cry about things anymore. It was exhausting and always gave her a migraine. So she wouldn't. She simply refused to.

She swallowed, and the words seemed stuck in her throat for a moment before she managed to force them out. "Thank you for telling me, Professor Snape. I apologise for disrupting your class today."

Snape snorted, and then coughed when it aggravated his damaged vocal chords.

"There is a reason I am the one informing you. I have several theoretical potions that may slow the effects of the curse, or stop it, although you may prefer care at St Mungo's. However—" his jaw rolled slightly, as though the words coming out of his mouth had a vile taste to them. "If you choose to remain at Hogwarts, as Potions Master, I will endeavor to develop a cure for you."

Hermione stared at him for several seconds.

Going to St Mungo's would mean withdrawing from school and living either at the hospital or with the Weasleys.

It would mean being an invalid.

It would mean telling Harry and Ron.

Snape was an exceptional curse-breaker. Dumbledore should have died within hours of putting on the Gaunt Ring; instead, he lived for nearly a year because of the enchantment Snape had used to slow the curse.

If she had a year, Snape might be able to stretch it out into a decade or more. If she stayed at Hogwarts and graduated, she might have more opportunity to use the time she had left constructively.

"You may inform the Headmistress of your choice." He drew himself up, his shoulders rising so that he looked extremely batlike, his unfriendly black eyes glowering down at her; as though he were trying to make it as clear as possible that he was only offering his aid because he was obligated to.

He appeared to be on the verge of turning and sweeping away.

"I would like to stay, if that's alright with you, Professor," Hermione said quickly, her voice low.

Snape froze and peered down at her with an impassive expression on his face.

After a moment, he blinked. "I hope you're not inflicting yourself upon me because you think I would be offended if you choose to withdraw."

Hermione's throat tightened but she raised her chin. "No."

He made a snorting-coughing sound in the back of his throat, turned, and left, his black robes billowing behind him.

* * *

After Hermione was discharged from the hospital, she spent most of her evenings in the dungeons, her arm unbandaged and laid across Snape's private lab table while he muttered incantations over it and mixed up potions that she either had to gag down, or grit her teeth and let him apply to the raw wound on her arm.

Bellatrix had used a cursed blade and cast an additional curse on the injury at some point when Hermione had been tortured. Because of the way Bellatrix had used the cruciatus on Hermione immediately after cursing the wound, the curse had not 'set' properly. Instead of staying concentrated in Hermione's arm until it was lethal enough to kill her, the curse had distributed itself and 'set' throughout her bloodstream.

Hermione was still alive as a result, but although the curse was weakened by the distribution, it was also impossible to counter by any traditional method.

Snape was a viciously unpleasant companion. He worked in stony silence and didn't speak to her at all except to snap at her to move out of his way, or resentfully interrogate her about how she felt before and after he dosed her with nauseating potions, and then glower at her answers as though she were being intentionally uncureable.

Hermione was too tired to contribute any conversation and didn't think he'd appreciate it if she tried to. She sat quietly and read her textbooks, jotting down notes, or just watched him work, theorising about what he was doing.

She'd hoped that eventually things would become routine enough that spending time with him wouldn't feel like having her emotions exhaustively rubbed down with sandpaper, but if anything Snape became progressively more unpleasant as the weeks rolled by and Hermione's health deteriorated further.

She stopped reading and simply sat with her head resting on a stack of textbooks while he worked until she fell asleep there. She'd wake up in an empty lab, levitated onto a couch with a blanket draped over her.

She missed a homework deadline for the first time in her life, fainted in Charms class, and then fainted again in History of Magic three days later.

Minerva called her into her office and asked if perhaps she should write and tell her friends of her illness, since it was difficult to conceal when she regularly arrived late to class and looked ghastly pale.

Hermione gnawed her lip.

Most of her friends had not returned to Hogwarts; at least not any that Hermione regularly interacted with. She'd been clear when the school year started that there was little reflected glory available to gleaned from her. Hermione had not returned to Hogwarts for new friends or to tell stories about all the adventures she'd had with Ron and Harry.

She had never been particularly well-liked among the larger student population. It had only taken a few weeks before she was predominantly left alone, although the fainting had recently drawn attention.

It was only a matter of time before word got out that there was something wrong with her.

"Harry and Ron are visiting Hogsmeade weekend," she said after a silence. "I'll tell them then, in person."

After a long, late evening in Snape's lab, she made her way slowly out of the dungeons. She reached the foot of the stairs and stopped on the third step, feeling too drained to climb them. She wondered if she had reached a low enough point to go ask a Slytherin prefect to levitate her up to the first floor.

Her shoulders slumped. Once she got out of the dungeons, there would be more stairs. And then more.

When she reached the Gryffindor tower, there would be seven final flights in order to reach her bed.

Maybe it was time to admit she was dying. She should withdraw from Hogwarts and make the most of the remaining time, rather than try to pretend she'd catch a lucky break and end up with more.

What possible use would her corpse have with a Hogwarts diploma or NEWTs? It was delusional of her to even be there.

Her eyes started burning as she stared at the staircase. She buried her face in her hands and struggled to choke back a sob.

"Is it so unbearable to admit you need assistance that you must instead waste everyone's time by weeping on the stairs," rasped Snape's enraged voice directly into her ear. One of his hands firmly wrapped itself around her waist and the other gripped her right arm to stabilise her as he walked her up the stairs and out of the dungeons. "Some of us wish to enjoy the severely limited personal time they still possess."

His hands were warm through her robes. She focused on his bruising grip rather than on the dizzy pounding in her head.

He didn't leave her at the top of the dungeons staircase but escorted her to the hospital ward and handed her over into the care of Madam Pomfrey. While Hermione was collapsing into a bed, she could hear his low, grinding voice giving Pomfrey a long list of exacting instructions.

The next day, Minerva arrived to announce that Hermione's room was being relocated. She was going to be moved to the staff housing wing, private quarters with not nearly so many stairs, and—Severus was also going to be there, to keep an eye on her and work to reverse the curse. They were spending most of their time together as it was; this way it would be less disruptive, and Hermione would not be required to traverse the entire castle every evening after a school day.

Hermione rather felt as though McGonagall had just firmly announced the intention to house Hermione within the constant proximity of an aggressive scorpion, but her choices currently were Snape or St Mungo's.

St Mungo's felt like giving up.

Snape scowled furiously at her while relocating his entire private lab into the kitchen of "their quarters" and glowered with cold rage while ferrying boxes into his room.

Hermione lay curled into a small heap on the sofa, trying unsuccessfully not to take every muttered profanity personally.

Living with Snape was as unbearable as she had feared it would be. He barely spoke to her; he just glared balefully when storming through the apartment carrying armloads of essays to his room to grade and made constant references to treasured personal time that no longer existed. When he wasn't teaching, he was either grading homework or stooped over dozens of cauldrons furiously trying to develop a cure for Hermione's curse.

He treated her continuously deteriorating health as though it were both a personal and professional insult.

Hermione finally made her way to the Headmistress' office with a withdrawal form in hand.

"I appreciate that you asked Professor Snape to help me, but I think I should be realistic about my chances." Hermione said after she'd dropped into a seat across from the Headmistress' desk, her head feeling achingly hollow. "I've disrupted his life more than enough during the last month. Asking him to supervise me during his time off, in addition to all the hours he's spent trying to develop a cure, is too much of an imposition."

McGonagall leaned back in her seat, Hermione's withdrawal form dangling between her fingers. Her dark eyes stared shrewdly at Hermione for a moment before she spoke.

"I am not Albus Dumbledore, Miss Granger. The faculty of Hogwarts are faculty, they do not work here as a favour to me, or perform extensive non-contractual research at my request. Severus volunteered to develop a cure for you of his own initiative, brought to my attention that Gryffindor Tower was difficult to access, and proposed the relocation his laboratory."

Hermione stared at McGonagall until the corner of the Headmistress' mouth twitched. She leaned forward, and her sharp gaze softened as she studied Hermione, sliding the withdrawal slip across her desk.

"Severus is a difficult man even on his best days. If you would prefer to be transferred to St Mungo's, I understand. However, I assure you, Severus' efforts have been entirely of his own initiative and volition. You are not imposing on anyone."

Hermione stood, and, picking up the withdrawal form up off the desk, she slipped it into her pocket and returned to her bedroom, curling up in bed and pressing a hand against her throbbing arm.

She heard the door bang, Snape's muttered cursing, and the sound of clattering cauldrons and supplies being removed from their jars. When the noise eased to the faint tap of a knife chopping ingredients and the soft hissing of rising steam, Hermione stood up and made her way to the doorway to watch him work.

She had no idea why Snape would want to go to all the effort of trying to cure her when she'd been convinced her entire life that he utterly abhorred her.

He'd worked for decades to protect Lily Potter's son; it had been the point of everything he'd done. Hermione couldn't understand why he'd bother to do anything for her.

His coal black eyes were fastened on the contents of a small silver cauldron as he stirred it rapidly and added several drops of armadillo bile. He was completely immersed in brewing, his expression a stark contrast to the indolent one worn during classes. He had stopped even pretending to care about teaching Potions class. He was no longer Head of Slytherin, and he had no inclination towards showing favouritism towards anyone.

He was bored, she realised.

Seventeen years of teaching the same classes to children he loathed; trying to cure her was something interesting to do. He'd probably made the initial offer thinking it would be easy, and now he was continuing out of pride and obstinancy that there was a problem that was beating him.

He wasn't saving Hermione Granger; he was just interested in getting the better of the thing on her arm. He was getting the better of Bellatrix Lestrange.

The fact that Hermione was the person attached to the problem was a coincidental nuisance.

Snape didn't appear to even notice her as she stood in the doorway watching him work. His cheekbones were flushed from the heat, and his nostrils were flared. She stayed a few minutes longer before retreating back into her room.

A picture of Harry and Ron sat on the small table beside her bed, lying face-down.

Hermione lifted the picture up and stared at Harry and Ron's grinning faces for a minute before laying it face-down again and turning to her textbooks.

She was going to have to tell them she was dying when she saw them on the weekend, and she didn't want to think about it.


	2. Two

It was easier to endure living with Snape with McGonagall's reassurance.

A few days later, while Hermione was checking her deadlines to ensure she hadn't forgotten any homework, she heard Snape's rasping voice.

"Miss Granger."

She could tell by his tone that he had something new to dose her with. Her stomach shriveled, and she reluctantly made her way out to the kitchen.

Snape was preparing a poultice and glanced up only briefly to slide a potion across the worktop towards her. Hermione picked it up, studying the colour.

"You need to sedate me?" Her voice was tight and nervous.

Snape didn't look up from the poultice. "I've consulted with several healers in Switzerland. The curse originated in your arm, but it extends throughout your entire bloodstream. This poultice will, _hopefully _"—the word was enunciated through his teeth—"draw the curse back through your blood and out of the wound. It's not a cure, but you may show progressive improvement, and I'll have time to explore further options of breaking or removing the curse."

Hermione swallowed and looked back down at the sedative gripped in her hand. "Is it going to hurt?"

Snape looked up at her, his sallow face expressionless. "It is."

Hermione nodded, and her hand shook slightly as she unstoppered the vial and swallowed the potion. It hit her like a tidal wave, and she dropped heavily onto a kitchen stool.

She was distantly aware of Snape moving around the worktop to stand behind her, and his thin fingers parting her lips and sliding something between her teeth. His skin was calloused and rough against her mouth.

She bit experimentally. A gag?

Her heart rate skyrocketed. How much was this going to hurt?

She tried to sit up and pull away but found her arm immobilised and pinned to the surface of the worktop. She jerked wildly, fighting to get away.

"Be still!" Snape's voice was an angry snarl in her ear. "Do you want to live or die?"

Hermione stilled. Her blood was roaring in her ears, and her arm was throbbing in tempo with her pounding heart. Her thoughts were a vague and incoherent rush in her brain, but she was certain she didn't want to die.

Her jaw was trembling. She bit down harder on the gag before nodding.

She could vaguely feel his cool hands unwrapping the bandages on her arm, and then she watched through drooping eyes as he picked up the steaming poultice and pressed it against the open incisions on her forearm.

She started screaming.

It hurt. It hurt. It hurt like being crucio'd. It was as though he'd set her arm on fire. The fire was spreading into her veins, up her arm and into her chest, up her throat and down her back, her stomach. Everywhere. She was burning everywhere.

She screamed and screamed through the gag and nearly rammed her head into the worktop as she tried to tear her arm free.

Snape's left arm was wrapped tightly around the top of her head. She was pressed back against his chest, and his right hand had entwined with hers to keep her from clawing at herself or him.

It felt like an eternity of burning through her entire body before she felt the poultice pulled away and the fiery agony slowly faded. Snape removed his hands and Hermione released the gag from between her teeth, dropping her head down onto the worktop.

Her entire body felt drained. She didn't even have the strength to shake as a long, agonised wail escaped her, tears slid out of her eyes, and weak, gasping whimpers emerged from her throat. She lay slumped and struggling to breathe.

"You need sleep to recover," she heard him say.

She was lifted—not levitated, but actually picked up—and carried to her room.

He laid her on her bed and sat beside her, casting several spells on her arm and body and studying them with a veiled expression. He slipped his fingers into a pocket in his robes and withdrew several potions which he helped her swallow. He smelled medicinal. It wasn't exactly a pleasant smell, but Hermione found it oddly comforting.

Aside from being tortured, she didn't think she had ever experienced anything so painful in her life. Of course "the cure" would be as horrible as the disease. She curled weakly onto her side and passed out with exhaustion while Snape was replacing the gauze and wrapping fresh bandages around her arm.

The next day Hermione felt better. Noticeably. She woke feeling as though she had actually rested and ate breakfast because she was hungry rather than out of a sense of begrudging obligation.

Snape stopped her in the hallway on the way to Charms, and they stood in an empty classroom while he cast several spells on her. His expression betrayed nothing, but his eyes were less resentful as he nodded and swept away without another word.

The poultice had to be applied every week to counteract the effects of the curse. In between, Hermione had to take dozens of potions to bolster her body and repair all the gradual damage she was suffering from. Potions to repair her kidneys, liver, and heart, her lymphatic system, endocrine system, and digestive tract. Almost everything was damaged and would continue to be re-damaged for as long as she continued carrying the curse. The poultice just reduced the damage enough to give Snape more time to remedy some of it.

He had potentially bought her several years, at the ongoing price of utter physical agony for three minutes every week.

At least she didn't have to tell Harry and Ron that she was dying when they came to visit that Hogsmeade weekend. The conversation was terrible enough as it was, although she had felt better than she had in weeks.

Harry and Ron both turned so pale she was worried they were going to faint. Harry's eyes kept getting bigger and bigger, and he kept saying, "but you're going to be alright, right?" until Ron actually smacked him across the back of the head.

They carried Hermione's bag and brought her drinks and food, and when she said she was tired, they both held her hands and walked her all the way back to the castle. As they left, they told her to promise to tell them if there was ever anything she wanted them to do.

Hermione felt increasingly better and better with every week of additional treatment. She had energy; she regained her lost weight and got ahead on all her assignments. She began to remember what it felt like to take an interest in life rather than just feeling tired constantly. But the weekly treatment was traumatic and did not become easier to handle or less painful. It hurt just as much and lasted just as long every single time.

"Could you stun me?" she asked while he was preparing a poultice for the third time.

She was sitting on the kitchen stool, trying and failing to remain calm as she waited, dread curdling through her veins.

Snape paused and looked up at her, appearing to suddenly notice that there was an actual person in his presence and not merely a cursed arm with vital signs attached to it.

He stared at her, blinking, for several seconds.

Hermione cringed and braced herself for him to say something scathing about her ingratitude or fling a reminder of her desire to live into her face.

Instead his cold, tense expression eased slightly. He looked at her in silence for a moment longer before reaching up and adjusting the high collar that he wore to conceal the heavy scarring on his neck. He pressed his hand against the fabric for a moment before he cleared his throat.

"The magic I'm using is not traditionally resorted to for several reasons. Firecrab glands are generally lethal. They are burning the curse out of your blood, and it is a delicate balance to destroy the curse without the process killing you. Your magic—" his voice grew thinner and cracked as he spoke. He paused and cleared his throat again.

"Your magic"—his words were stronger—"is reactive and directs and restricts the effects of the treatment to the curse. If you were unconscious, your magic would be less able to contain the process, which could result in a heart attack or organ failure."

Hermione nodded slowly. She'd assumed the answer would be no. "Alright."

Her hands were shaking slightly as she spelled the bandage off her arm and took the sedative.

When she was slumped down and crying afterwards, Snape brushed back the curls sticking to her face and waited for a minute before picking her up and carrying her to her bed.

After he'd dosed her with several potions and stood to leave, she caught his wrist.

"Do you care—if I die?"

He firmly withdrew his hand but then sat back down onto the edge of her bed and studied her.

"I am not entirely without conscience, Miss Granger," he finally said in a cold voice.

Well, that wasn't the immediate 'no' that she'd half-expected. Hermione kept looking up at him and waited for him to add 'but no, not particularly.'

Instead he glanced away and cleared his throat. "If you die, you'll be immortalised as a Wizarding hero, and everyone will forget what an insufferable know-it-all you were."

Hermione choked and gave a small laugh. The corner of Snape's mouth twitched.

He stared at her for several seconds before glancing at the downturned picture beside her bed. "You deserve to live part of your life outside of the oversized and unappreciative shadow of Mr Potter."

Hermione was silent.

He stood and walked away.

Hermione discovered Snape was at his least unpleasant after her treatment, and he would occasionally answer her questions. Once her health was no longer in a steady decline, he became considerably less testy while continuing to brew potions and endeavoring to find a means of permanently breaking the curse on her.

He was dramatically better company than anyone else.

Now that word was getting out that Hermione was "mortally cursed" on account of her wartime heroism, she found herself regularly ambushed in the halls and library by students who wanted to know all the particulars. Most of the faculty indulged her unbearably and tended to grow misty-eyed whenever they looked at her.

Hermione found the tears and the trite words about what a fighter she was to be irritating.

She wasn't going to die. There was a treatment now; in a few months Snape would discover a cure and then it would be all over. She was going to be just fine, and no amount of crying and tear stains on her robes, or thanks and praise for her bravery was going to make one speck of difference.

Snape did not treat her that way at all. She had a very intriguing cursed arm and that was the extent of his interest and concern. He didn't give her excessive points for knowing answers in class or having her robes on straight the way other professors did. He made only the most perfunctory of allowances towards her, and it was a source of profound relief to have one person in the castle who didn't coddle her constantly

She started grading essays for him. He was spending most of his time trying to treat her; she could at least return the favour by reducing his evening workload.

When she first offered, he was scathing in his refusal. However, she had the energy to persist and kept prodding him about it until he finally gave in and let her do a "preliminary" grading of the first year essays. Then gradually, as the evenings progressed, he "permitted" her to grade years first through fifth. NEWT level essays he still graded personally.

She would sit in the kitchen working on her own homework or grading potions essays for him while he was brewing, or casting experimental spells on her injury, or rapidly perusing book after book or scroll after scroll of medical correspondence with various healers and potions masters.

He had consulted with dozens of magical hospitals and specialists since he'd begun treating her. He regularly receive letters that he'd angrily set on fire when the healers in question advised making Hermione comfortable and letting her die peacefully rather than giving her false hope.

After two months of the poultice treatment without a new breakthrough, Hermione gradually developed nerve damage and an acute sensitivity to temperature. When a cauldron nearby began to radiate heat, she started trembling, and her body broke into a cold sweat

She tried to move away from the worktop and over to the sofa unobtrusively, but when she was halfway across the room, her knees suddenly gave out, and all her books slipped out of her hands and fell crashing to the floor.

Her fingers and arms kept trembling, and she couldn't pick the books up. She tried to breathe calmly and keep trying, but every time the books slipped out of her fingers and she heard the spines break further, a quiet gasp would escape her, and her hands would shake harder as she tried again.

_Don't cry. Don't cry. Don't cry. Pick up your books. You're not helpless. _

Anxiety burned in her lungs. If she couldn't pick up her books, she'd have to withdraw from school. Her vision started blurring. They'd put her into St Mungo's, and she'd die there. Her chest contracted as she fought to breathe, and she tried to pick up her books again.

Her throat felt as though there were a bezoar lodged inside it, and she tried not to visibly break down.

A hand closed over hers. "Leave them."

She tried to pull her hand free. "No, I can—"

Snape firmly pulled her fingers away from the book she was trying to grasp. His hand was warm.

"I can—" Her throat felt too tight to breathe.

He held her by the elbows and pulled her to her feet, steering her over to the sofa.

She leaned forward, half-doubled over as she tried to breathe, and he braced her up with his shoulder.

He had his wand out a moment later, casting diagnostic spells on her and studying them before taking her wrist in his hand and feeling her pulse. Her whole body was trembling violently as though she were going into shock.

Breathe. She just needed to breathe. She wasn't anywhere near the cauldrons. She squeezed her eyes closed when they started to burn, and kept dragging short gasping breaths in through her teeth until she gradually calmed down. Finally, she managed to inhale slowly and the scent of soap and vervain that clung to Snape's robes filled her nose.

He was silent, sitting beside her without a word until Hermione stopped shaking, and her chest wasn't hitching sharply every time she inhaled.

She drew a deep, steadying breath and awkwardly straightened so that she wasn't pressing half her body against his shoulder.

Snape remained seated beside her.

"I believe it would be in your interest to space treatment out to fourteen day intervals," he said at length. "It will give your nervous system more time to recover."

Hermione's stomach plummeted and she looked up at him, eyes wide. "But—but—that won't be enough to counteract the curse then."

"No," Snape said, and his expression rippled briefly before becoming mask. "But it will slow it, and still provide additional time to break the curse. Otherwise, the damage from treatment may become worse for you than the curse itself."

Hermione dragged in a ragged breath and felt as though her chest were being crushed. Snape's hand was still warm on her wrist, his index finger resting against her pulsepoint in a strangely comforting way.

_You're going to die. He's not going to find a cure. You're going to die. He just doesn't want to tell you because he actually feels sorry for you. _

Then she almost laughed at herself, because she was almost certain Severus Snape had never felt sorry for anyone in his entire life. She swallowed and looked away, pulling her wrist free and gripping her hands.

"I don't know what to do," she said at last. "I don't know—what I'm supposed to be doing any more."

She looked down at all the books she'd dropped in the middle of the room. Five of them were library books, and she could tell by the way they were lying that the pages had been crumpled in addition to the spines being broken.

Madam Pince would be incensed when Hermione returned them. Hermione would probably be banned from checking out rare books. She might end up with a severe fine.

She'd never worried much about money before. But that was prior to her decision to shut down her parents' dental practice and relocate them to a different continent. Before she'd withdrawn all the money from her building society account for food during the horcrux hunt.

Before she'd been cursed, and needed weekly treatment with highly-regulated potion materials.

"I don't know if there's any point to this," she said, still staring at the books on the floor. "I keep thinking there must be one; that I'll figure out what it is eventually and then everything will come together, or at least be more bearable. But maybe there isn't." She gave a strained laugh under her breath and looked down at her ink-stained hands. "Maybe that's the point."

There was a long silence.

"I didn't expect to survive the war," Snape said, just as she was about to stand and go to her room.

Hermione looked over at him with surprise. He never spoke of the war. He'd given the most begrudging and evasive testimony possible at trial and would have ended up in Azkaban if Harry hadn't been insistent and shared Snape's memories with the Wizengamot.

Hermione had gotten the impression that Snape would have preferred Azkaban.

Post-trial, Snape made it quite clear that he despised Harry, and nothing he'd done in Lily Potter's memory had anything to do with caring an iota about Harry personally. For reasons Hermione couldn't comprehend, Harry seemed to think that eventually Snape was going to come around to him.

Hermione didn't think Snape had the intention of ever coming around to anyone.

He was still seated beside her, staring across the room at the potions he'd been brewing. His expression was far away.

"Albus rarely gave me instructions that indicated I was more than a valuable pawn. My usefulness to him was primarily because of the level of penance I owed." His voice had the strained, rasping edge to it that was typical after a long day of teaching, but he seemed unaware of it. He raised an eyebrow, and his mouth tensed. "When he asked that I kill him in order to protect Draco Malfoy, my place was made clear."

He looked down at the floor. "When I learned that he had been grooming Lily Potter's son as a sacrificial lamb despite knowing my years of service had been for the sake of protecting him in her place, it was undeniable." There was a pause, and his expression twisted in a brief grimace. "I assumed a quick death would be the most I could hope for. I believed Albus had been correct, and Harry would die as well. It seemed—appropriate, to plan no further."

He snorted, and it made him cough. His long fingers pressed against the side of his neck for a moment before he adjusted the collar of his robes, and his hand vanished back into the voluminous sleeves. "When I woke in the Shrieking Shack with that damnable bird weeping over me, I didn't know what I was intended to do. I despise being a professor at this school—but its been my home most of my life now."

He was silent for several seconds before glancing over at Hermione. "If the war requires a final victim, it is unacceptable that it be you when I'm here, forced to survive against my own volition."

Hermione gave another dry laugh. She'd found that when she wanted to cry, forcing herself laugh instead cut the impulse.

There was the briefest hint of a smile in the corner of his mouth as he looked at her.

"I was glad you survived, Professor." Hermione managed a small, unsteady smile of her own and raised her eyebrows as she met his eyes. "You deserve to live part of your life outside of the oversized shadow of Albus Dumbledore."

He narrowed his eyes, but they seemed to glint briefly with amusement before he gave a derisive scoff.

* * *

**Updates weekly on Monday. **

**Also: there were a few comments expressing concern about the ambiguous ending I referenced in the opening notes. I'd describe the conclusion as implied HEA, but not explicitly depicted. **


	3. Three

It was subtle at first. Initially Hermione didn't really think much of it.

Really, it was primarily because he had such elegant hands. That was the first thing that she'd noticed when she was tired, and her head hurt too much to read. She'd sit watching him brew potions, and his hands would remind her of a musician's. He had a sort of melodic fluidity in the way he moved.

His fingers were beautifully long.

It wasn't as though she actually—

It was just a passing fancy.

Although it wasn't that implausible an attraction. She'd always thought Harry had been unreasonably rude in the ways he'd described Snape. Snape really wasn't at all bad to look at. His features were—distinguished. His appearance a mixture of striking and enigmatic.

Pale, yes. And thin. But those were hardly things Harry had any business criticising. Snape could hardly help it if his hair and skin tended to be damp from potion steam.

He was a Potions master. It was literally his job to brew potions.

However, that was all entirely beside the point.

It was silly crush. Not anything that would ever go anywhere. Just something to amuse herself with in the evenings when she was too drained to do anything but sit at the worktop making her arm available for his examination for hours each evening.

She indulged herself in the idea because it was something to feel besides anxiously worrying that she was going to die and dreading the next treatment, which remained her only means of not dying.

The sheer absurdity of the premise made it diverting. Something silly to let her mind run away with.

Severus Snape is trying to save you because he actually cares about you. The curse is more than just an interesting puzzle to solve. He would actually grieve a little if you died. Maybe you're the first person he's let himself care about in decades.

The corners of her mouth would twitch at her own ridiculousness, and she'd carefully avoid his probing gaze.

Then the joke began to get away from her. Her breath would catch, and her heart rate would jump when he'd touch her in order to examine her arm or take a new blood sample for analysis. When he was casting several analytic spells on her arm, she realised she could feel him breathing, and it sent a shiver through her gut. Her skin prickled whenever she felt him standing behind her.

It was almost terrifying how rapidly it evolved from a diversion to an actual, intense physical attraction.

She'd catch herself staring at his pale hands and long slender fingers, wondering what they would feel like if he touched in a manner that was entirely non-clinical. Probably incredible. He was so precise and exacting. If he wanted to do something pleasurable to someone, he would probably make a point of making it mind-blowing.

Thinking about it would make her entire body tingle and sometimes, when he'd look at her, a thrilled shiver would slide through her.

She found herself obsessively imagining what it would be like to sleep with him. Just sex. It wasn't as though she had any girlish delusions about it being anything romantic.

Professor Snape simply had many traits of a sort of Byronic hero, which was an archetype that had appealed to Hermione as a thirteen year old recovering from her profound disillusionment with Lockhart.

He wasn't classically handsome, but he was striking, with a strange sort of magnetism. Not particularly good or heroic—or nice—but compelling and tragically complicated. His enduring love for Lily Potter rather typified him into the role.

Hermione, of course, was not a heroine; not to Snape, or to anyone now. Although her declining health was appropriate to the rather gothic mood that Snape seemed to inspire. Maybe she should buy a négligée—but on second thought, Hogwarts was a stone castle in Scotland, and she would probably get chillblains, which were unattractive, and Snape would—

Well. She didn't like to think about Snape's response.

When he picked her up as she was leaning across the worktop crying after a treatment, she wrapped her arms around his neck and buried her face in his robes, desperate for a sense of comfort. He instantly stiffened as he carried her to her room, pulled her arms off firmly, and then left without even checking the diagnostics or rebandaging her arm.

You're being pathetic and idiotic because you're lonely, she told herself, her face burning in the darkness as she lay in bed. He's your professor. He's almost old enough to be your father. He's probably noticed now and feels revulsed by you. He won't feel comfortable helping you anymore, and then you'll die because you're a stupid schoolgirl who can't control her imagination.

She stifled the train of thought as aggressively as she could, trying to backtrack. It was a much more difficult door to close than it had been to open.

She couldn't make her heart stop pounding or repress how keenly aware of him she'd become.

She needed a boyfriend.

She immediately dismissed the idea. As if anyone would want to get emotionally invested with a cursed girl. As if she'd let them, knowing how it could potentially end.

No. There would be no boyfriends in her future until there was a cure.

She just needed friends that she wasn't preoccupied with being angry at and who didn't coddle her constantly. Unfortunately those two categories encompassed almost everyone.

Discounting all that, she hardly had the time. Keeping up with school, grading potions essays, and feeling herself slowly fade away in a fourteen day countdown loop ate the entirety of her physical, mental, and emotional resources.

What on earth was she supposed to do, tell Snape "Sorry, I can't help you with your class workload anymore, I'm in desperate need of new company in order to stop fantasizing about your hands"?

He was nearly forty. He assuredly had better options available to him than the cursed student under his care.

He'd been in love with Lily Potter for thirty years.

He was still in love with her.

Lily Potter had been pretty with striking eyes. Popular. More Ginny Weasley than Hermione Granger.

The only thing Hermione had in common with Lily Potter was being Muggle-born. Which was a parallel quite literally written onto her arm, in case Snape ever happened to forget that detail.

They had both been called bright students in their year. However, Hermione's brightness had always been one of the things Snape found particularly detestable.

There was really no point in even thinking about it. Putting aside her current condition and the fact that he was her professor, there was really no chance of it. Ever.

Hermione carefully avoided his gaze and guiltily hunkered down on the far end of the worktop during the progressive evenings, careful not to do anything to annoy him.

She stopped initiating the very little conversation that she had and didn't even permit herself to look at him, or his hands, unless he addressed her.

But—sometimes she felt almost convinced that he lingered longer than necessary when he was examining her arm or taking her pulse. That he had begun to touch her more often than he needed to. Considerably more than he had at the beginning.

It was just because they'd gotten more comfortable with each other. She was certain that was all it was.

She fell asleep on the sofa while he was casting spells on her to inspect her physical deterioration.

She woke with her head resting against his shoulder, and his head resting on hers.

It was nothing. She was lonely, and he just happened to be the only person around who didn't treat her like some sad little pet to indulge with house-points and compliments as she wandered around the castle, cursed and fading.

He'd gotten used to her. She wasn't going to ruin the little bit of conviviality they'd achieved by doing anything idiotic like thinking it meant something.

She was well-aware that her condition was merely a diversion from the tedium of two decades teaching at Hogwarts.

She pressed her lips together as she curled her feet up on the couch, pressing her palm against her bandaged arm where the incisions were throbbing, and resting her head carefully against his shoulder.

His patronus was a doe.

He would never care about anyone but Lily Potter.

She had enough sense to know that.

* * *

She came back to their quarters after Transfiguration and found Snape standing in an immaculate kitchen. The worktop was entirely cleared. The scrolls which had papered the walls were gone. The cauldrons were all freshly scoured and hanging from the hooks overhead. There wasn't so much as an ingredient bottle out of place.

Snape was staring at the kitchen as though it had offended him in some way.

Some of the now-empty cauldrons had been brewing potions for months. There were no neat rows of freshly bottled potions arranged on any of the shelves.

Snape been increasingly taciturn during the last several days. Cold. The icy resentfulness he habitually directed towards her had begun resurfacing during their recent interactions.

As she stood beside him, studying the empty surfaces, she knew what it all meant.

Nothing had worked out.

He'd run out of ideas.

There was a hollow, sinking sensation throughout her chest and stomach as she absorbed it.

After a minute, he seemed to notice her beside him. He turned to look at her. His expression was closed, and his onyx eyes betrayed nothing.

"I believe a fresh start may be necessary," he said.

She forced a tight-lipped smile and nodded.

"I have some reading I need to finish." She shifted her shoulder to indicate her satchel before turning and walking quickly to her room.

Once the door was closed, she dropped her bookbag on the desk and stood dazedly in her room.

What are you supposed to do when you're going to die?

She should make a to-do list.

She'd want to be cremated. No expensive caskets or memorial services necessary. Harry and Ron could have any of her possessions that they wanted. Not that they'd want much. The rest could go to a charity.

They could bury her ashes in the Forest of Dean.

Were you allowed to send people letters informing them of your impending death? Or was it mandatory that you tell them in person?

She didn't even want to imagine the conversation with Harry and Ron, much less anyone else. Was there a criteria for closeness? Could she delegate it?

If she seemed very busy, perhaps it wouldn't seem quite so rude if she didn't want to deal with telling everyone in person. She'd make a bucket list.

She gave a quiet, choking laugh and dropped onto the edge of her bed, rocking slightly. Her sense of shock was fading away, and her heart began to race as though she were panicking. Her arm started throbbing in rhythm.

A bucket list. A list of things to do before she kicked the bucket.

Croaked.

Passed.

That term made her feel like a kidney stone. Perhaps it was apt. Horrible and painful for everyone involved and when it was finally over, everyone would just be relieved.

She gave another tight little laugh under her breath and gripped her left arm tighter as the room spun.

She needed to focus on her bucket list. She inhaled slowly and tried to begin one.

Could she include graduation? Would it count? She couldn't see why not. Then, after she'd graduated, she'd—

She'd—

She couldn't think of anything she wanted to do after that.

Everything sounded tiring.

If she felt like that now, when she had possibly another year or two to deteriorate to death, how would she feel six months? A year? She'd barely be functional. It would be unimaginably painful.

Eventually her nerves would stop recovering from the firecrab treatment.

Then she wouldn't feel sensations anymore. The light caress someone's hands. Wind on her face. Flavour. Colour and sight would gradually fade away. She wouldn't be able to read. Her hearing would go. The sensation of an arm wrapped around her shoulders.

It would all disappear.

Or she'd stop treatment, and die within the year.

She wondered if Snape would continue being the one to care for her once he ran out of ideas.

Probably not. There isn't anything interesting about an unsolvable curse.

Trying to cure her was one thing. Acting as hospice care for her when she couldn't be cured would be an entirely different matter. She'd graduate soon anyway.

She licked her lips and pressed them together. She'd graduate and then there wouldn't be anything to do but keep saying goodbye to everyone until she died...

There was a sharp rap on the door.

"Come in," she said.

The door opened, and Snape stood staring at her in a manner that was depressingly paternal.

Hermione's throat tightened, and she looked away.

Of all the stupid things she'd ever done, indulging herself in fancying him was possibly the most idiotic of all.

She heard him inhale as he entered her room and stopped in front of her.

"I'm not giving up."

Hermione nodded without looking at him.

Everyone kept lying to her as though it would make her feel better. As if being cursed meant she was stupid enough to believe whatever anyone said to her.

She got so many compliments now. So many things no one had ever bothered to say to her before. She was prettier, braver, smarter, and more beloved than she'd ever been in her entire life.

Snape knelt down, and his fingers rested against her jaw, tilting up her chin until his dark, exacting eyes met hers.

She felt him slip into her mind like a shadow.

She turned her head quickly away in order to break the connection.

"Don't!" she said in a tight voice. "I barely have any privacy as it is. I would like my mind at least to be mine alone."

He froze. "I apologise," he said after a moment, his hand dropping down to rest on her shoulder. "You've seemed depressed."

Hermione stared at him for a heartbeat and smiled caustically, her eyebrows arching up. "I'm dying. I get to be depressed about it sometimes, Professor."

His gaze sharpened. "Starting over is not giving up."

She looked at him a moment longer.

"Right…" she whispered in a voice so forced it shook.

There was a pause, and Snape cleared his throat, withdrawing his hand. "There's a healer in New York, specialised in curse reversal, who has offered to accept you into his private clinic. It may be an advisable next step for you, either immediately or following graduation if you intend to remain at Hogwarts until then."

Hermione sat in silence.

She'd gotten used to his bluntness. He didn't try to break things to her gently. He'd told she was dying without preamble. He'd said treatment would hurt, and it did.

Now he was being indirect. Because he considered her fragile? Possibly unstable—if he'd been standing outside the door listening to her laughter.

Perhaps he didn't want to admit any failure on his part. If he were 'magnanimous' and allowed another clinic and wizard to have a chance at trying to save her, then her death wouldn't be on him either.

This way, he could pass the failure on preemptively.

Her throat tightened. She looked down at her hands. "That's—that's what you think I should do?"

"It's what I would advise."

She nodded slowly. "Thank you, Professor," she said in a mechanical tone. "I'll consider it."

Never.

She didn't want to go die alone in America. She didn't want to die in Hogwarts. Or St Mungo's. Or at the Burrow.

She didn't want to die at all, and she was too drained to muster the rage she wanted to feel over the fact that she was, in spite of all her desire, effort, and sacrifices.

She didn't want to go to the Burrow and field the Weasleys' and Harry's guilt and grief. She still didn't know how to handle all the resentment she felt.

She was supposed to have a life. People always said she was clever. She was supposed to do things.

She started shaking.

Snape was studying her silently. When she started trembling, his hands rested on each of her shoulders. "What do you want to do?"

She stared at him.

He used to have such a beautifully smooth baritone. He'd utilised it to remarkable effect; his lectures had been spellbinding to her since her first potions class. The casual menace and terrified respect he could invoke with his slow drawl.

It was gone now.

His voice was always strained and rasping on the ear, as though he were fighting not to cough. He couldn't speak smoothly. There was no silken quality in his tone. It wavered unsteadily, especially after long days of teaching.

They were both of them tragic reflections of their pre-war selves. Broken, and defined now by the cracks.

She didn't want to be tragic. She didn't want to be defined by the worst day of her life.

Her chest jerked as she drew a sharp hiccoughing breath.

"I don't want to die." Her voice was forceful.

He didn't look away; he just gave the barest nod of acknowledgement.

She looked down at her knees.

She wanted to have a home—her home, not the Weasleys'. To have parents who remembered her. To have friends who weren't constantly overwhelmed by their own emotions to the point that she was comforting and reassuring them over the fact she was cursed.

She wanted to do all the things she'd told herself she'd do someday.

She wanted to feel alive, rather than like she was dying all the time, a little quicker with every passing moment.

She wanted to do something that felt like being alive.

Anything.

She looked up suddenly. Snape's face was only inches away from hers, his eyes fastened on her, studying her pensively.

Impulsively, without pausing for a moment to consider, she leaned forward and kissed him.

* * *

**Updates weekly on Monday. **


	4. Four

Hermione's fingers caught hold of his silk waistcoat as her lips met his narrow mouth.

She was certain he'd shove her away at any moment. She made no move to break off the kiss. She pressed closer instead, moving her lips slowly, memorising the shape of his mouth against hers.

He didn't move at all. He didn't jerk back or tear her hands off.

He sat frozen.

She wasn't sure if that was better or worse than being pushed away.

Hermione pressed her lips against his just a second longer and then slowly uncurled her fingers wistfully, drawing back, her apology already halfway out of her mouth.

As their lips parted, he shifted.

One of his hands closed over hers, and he leaned towards her, deepening the kiss.

Hermione's heart skipped a beat, her lips parting in surprise, and Snape's tongue moved forward into her mouth, caressing her lips and sliding between her teeth. His other hand captured her shoulder, drawing her nearer.

Her hand reached up to touch his face. To touch him. The tips of her fingers just barely grazed his skin, tracing along the narrow arching bone of his cheek before gliding further and tangling in his hair. She moved closer, her nose bumping against his, her breathing quick and nervous. His hair was fine. Silken. She twisted her fingers in it.

Her arm was throbbing in time with her nervous heartbeat, a painful, racing tempo she ignored, because this—this was what being alive felt like.

She'd forgotten what it felt like to be alive. The thrill and the rush of living that wasn't punctuated or underlaid with terror or dread.

His hand slipped up her shoulder to her throat, his thin fingers sliding along the curve of her jaw, seeking out the flutter of her pulse and the dip near her ear.

Snape kissed in the same precise and meticulous manner that he brewed potions. There was an exactitude in it that almost felt like detachment, but she could feel his intensity in the way he drew her closer. His hand ghosted down her body to her waist. His arm slid around her, and he shifted her until she was on her back beneath him.

He leaned over her, and his hair fell forward, brushing against her face. His thin lips played against her mouth as though he were tasting her. He didn't grope her; his slender fingers skimmed lightly along the fabric of her robes, trailing over the dips and rises of her body. The lightest, barest touch that sent her pulse racing dizzily. His hand slid tantalisingly across her abdomen.

This wasn't like kissing a boy.

Her entire brain was alight. She had never been so vividly aware of her body in a context that wasn't agonising.

This wasn't painful. It was—bright. Heady.

Shimmering.

A rush in her veins. Her chest was pounding. Her breath caught in her throat as she tried to guess where his fingers might alight next. When his hand barely brushed over her clothed breast, her entire body trembled. She felt her nipples harden as a shiver laced through her.

She was only dimly aware of the persistent pain in her arm, because there was a pulse of excitement rushing through her veins. A pleasurable heat was coiling between her legs, and every nerve in her body was attuned and waiting to feel him touch her. She reached up and grasped his waistcoat, dipping her fingers between the buttons and drawing him down closer.

He drew his mouth away from hers, and the tip of his tongue traced along her jaw, and his teeth lightly caught her earlobe.

She gave a breathy whimper, and her fingers tightened where they were gripping his clothes.

It was like being submerged by a wave. Crashing and tumbling and weightless, he was air.

His fingers slid under her back and along the length of her spine and she arched, gasping.

Her hands brushed against his neck and over the long, pale scars that sliced across his throat. She kissed him again and again. Her leg slid up and hooked over his.

The weight of his body bore down on her as he continued to kiss her. There was a burning coil of want nearly vibrating in her centre. She squirmed and arched against him, trying to urge him on.

More. She wanted more. She wanted it to keep growing until she forgot about dying entirely.

She could feel him hard at her hip.

She aroused him. He wanted her. She was someone desirable to him sexually.

The length of his body was pressed against hers. She moaned and rolled her hips and felt him between her legs.

Yes...

His mouth was on her neck. His hand on her breast. She wasn't sure when he'd unbuttoned her shirt, but she could feel the silk of his waistcoat and its buttons against her bare skin as he slid his thumb across her nipple. She gave a shuddering gasp and arched into his hands.

His fingers had closed around her right wrist, pinning it above her head. She awkwardly tried to unbutton his robes with her left hand. His clothes had so many damned buttons. She made it past his robes to his waistcoat and then finally began on his shirt. Her fingers had made it halfway down his torso when he shifted. His chest bore down, pinning her left arm between their ribs.

She screamed as his weight crushed the throbbing injury on her forearm.

She quickly bit off the sound, but it was too late.

He froze and jerked away. Staring at her, his black eyes wide, as though he'd only just remembered the identity of the person he'd been on the verge of copulating with.

His pale chest was heaving as he looked her up and down, lying under him on her bed, her shirt open, her bra pulled down, and her skirts at her waist. Her chest was rising and falling raggedly as she tried to catch her breath. He stared blankly at her for several seconds before abruptly collecting himself, pulling his robes closed and standing. He left without a word.

Hermione lay on her bed trying to recover herself. Her skirts were rucked up uncomfortably around her hips. She shifted and straightened before pulling her bra back up and and rebuttoning her shirt.

She sat on the edge of the bed trying to wrap her mind around the fact that she had gone suddenly from fantasising about having sex with her professor to very nearly doing so.

If she hadn't nearly screamed in his ear, they might be having sex right then and there.

The idea made her tingle all over.

She should regret it. She should at least be grateful for the interruption that had derailed them, but instead she was seething with frustration over being thwarted.

She had spent her entire life endeavoring to make good choices, and now she was dying and looking at narrow, rapidly shrinking window of time in which she even had the capacity to enjoy living.

She didn't really care if there were ethical and or vaguely moral reasons why she shouldn't want to sleep with her professor, a man who was twenty years her senior, who had bullied her in childhood, and who was in love with the dead mother of her best friend.

She didn't want to think about those things. She'd just had the most pleasurable and alive-feeling experience in—possibly her entire life; and she was probably going to be dead or barely lucid in a hospital or the Burrow within the next year.

It was time she did what she wanted. Now was the only opportunity for it that she had left. If anyone wanted to object, they could save it and take it up with her corpse.

If she and Snape had had sex right then, she wouldn't have regretted it. In fact, she wanted to have sex with him even more now than she had before. Now she knew what it felt like to have him touch her, the way he'd kiss her. She knew that it swept away everything else and let her feel alive.

He'd tasted her skin and ran his fingers along her body. She'd felt his physical response to her. Despite his abrupt departure, considering how far he'd gone, it hinted that wanting her was something he may have given some prior thought to.

Her toes curled.

Severus Snape didn't give the impression of being someone who did things without any previous consideration.

She drew a shivery breath and noticed she'd buttoned her shirt crookedly. When she was fixing it, she realised she'd begun bleeding through the bandages on her arm.

She sighed and went into the kitchen. While she was placing fresh gauze over it, Snape emerged from his room.

She didn't immediately look up at him. The last D on Mudblood has been cut deeper than the other letters. If she didn't press the gauze down carefully, it would pull the incision open when she moved her arm, causing it to hurt and bleed more.

Once the gauze was in place, she started wrapping it carefully by hand.

Snape finally spoke. "That was a mistake."

"No," Hermione said firmly, shaking her head as she kept wrapping her arm. She looked up and met his eyes. "I'd been thinking about it for a while."

He'd redressed. In fact, it appeared he'd showered and changed entirely. His hair was still damp.

His nostrils flared, and he stared at her with an unreadable expression.

"That—" he said at length, "is not the point. I'm your professor."

"I could drop out of Potions," Hermione said in a bland voice as she tucked the bandage neatly under itself and fastened it in place.

"I would still be your professor."

"You know, having sex with me would hardly the most unethical thing you've done. You did let the Carrows teach here last year," Hermione said, crossing her arms. "I'm an adult. I'm nearly twenty; I would have graduated a year ago if I hadn't been busy helping Harry save the world."

"That—" the word was sharply clipped, " is also not the point."

_You're being childish. _

_You are a child. _

The unspoken words hung in the air.

"This was a mistake. You're one of my students," he said in a final tone although he was not actually looking at her as he said it. "It will not happen again."

Hermione tried not scowl or do anything else that might be construed as 'childish.' She still rolled her eyes, despite her best efforts.

"You've been teaching here since you were twenty-one. Almost anyone in the British wizarding world who's more than four years younger than you has been your student," she said.

Snape was scathingly silent. She could feel him glaring at her.

Hermione looked up at him.

"I want to have sex with you," she said, meeting his eyes.

His expression grew black, and his eyes narrowed dangerously.

She continued uncowed. "I've been thinking about it for a while. That's why I kissed you. I've been wanting to have sex with you. I didn't intend to stop you—I wouldn't have stopped you. I don't think our kiss was a mistake, and I'm not going to regret it."

He scoffed low in his throat. "We'll see."

* * *

Snape continued to work in the kitchen every evening until late into the night. Hermione still sat at the end of the worktop grading essays and keeping up with homework.

He had begun endeavouring to craft potions that he'd previously dismissed as unworkable or not worth the potential side effects.

However he was cold again.

Vicious in all the ways he used to be.

He touched her brusquely and as little as possible.

He failed her in Potions class with a mocking sneer when she wasn't able to break the skin of the sopophorous beans on her own and deducted thirty points from Gryffindor.

Hermione had expected he'd go out of his way to antagonise her, but she found it affected her more than she'd anticipated. She'd known and reminded herself that his sexual interest didn't necessitate or indicate any emotional investment or concern for her whatsoever. She understood that in theory.

Yet the effortless cruelty he casually barraged her with buried itself like a weight in her chest, a little harder to carry with each successive day.

She was so tired. All the potions he'd begun testing on her were worse. They made her feel worse.

He poured them down her throat as though she were a lab rat, his interest in the results and side effects purely theory-based, with no expression of concern over the fact that she was actually enduring all of them.

One potion caused her blood to move so sluggishly that her heart would pound until there was a stabbing sensation in her chest when she had to walk down a hallway. She collapsed after climbing a flight of stairs and had to be taken to the hospital for an afternoon. He didn't even bother to visit her there. The next potion made her drowsy and dried her skin so that it cracked and split painfully at all her joints; as though she wasn't already bleeding enough.

She had always imagined that if she were dying that she would be the patient and long-suffering type. She found that she was not.

She snapped at everyone, or just fled in order to keep from having an emotional breakdown every time someone said something idiotically unhelpful or she felt as though she were being handled delicately. She was angry or on the verge of tears at all times, often simultaneously. She didn't have any reserves of patience as she was using up all her strength in her feeble attempts to maintain a sense of normalcy.

Each successive callous interaction with Snape felt as though it were stake he were driving into her, blow by blow.

When she had to undergo the next firecrab treatment, he gripped her jaw, digging his fingers in against her teeth until they parted, and pushed the gag between her teeth with such indifference she could have been horse he was bridling.

He didn't touch her or utter a word of comfort as she lay slumped and sobbing afterward.

He levitated her into her room and stood beside her bed briefly while he checked a few diagnostics.

When he turned to leave, she spoke up.

"You win," she said, her voice low and exhausted.

He froze without looking back.

She closed her eyes. "I regret it now…"

* * *

Hermione sat at her desk, staring at her timetable for nearly an hour. There were eight weeks until term ended, and she needed to drop a class, possibly two. Or three.

She'd gotten so close. Graduation was just around the corner, and she'd almost managed to reach it with her academic record intact.

She kept trying to rally for the final haul, but she had nothing left to rally.

She fainted twice in as many days, both times in the library. The first time, she'd ended up in the hospital for nearly an entire day. The second time, she'd been in such a rarely visited aisle in the Restriction Section, she woke hours later and found herself where she'd collapsed on the floor.

If she was feeling well enough at the end of June, she would still try to sit for the NEWT exams of her dropped classes. That was her hope.

She wasn't sure what the point would be beyond her obstinate attachment to the idea, but she was doggedly determined to do it in direct refusal to the pleas of Harry and the Weasleys that she leave Hogwarts. It wasn't as though curse-breaking clinics or hospitals had NEWTs requirements for patients. Or that anyone cared about Hermione graduating except Hermione herself. It wasn't as though anyone was going to say, "well, at least she graduated before she died."

Were they going to put it on her tombstone as her crowning achievement? Hermione Granger, Graduated Hogwarts with Eleven NEWTS.

She wanted to graduate. She'd always told herself she'd graduate.

She dipped her quill into the inkwell and hesitated. Taking a deep breath, she drew an X over Potions and Defense Against the Dark Arts. After another moment's hesitation, she crossed out History of Magic; she could review all the material without Binns.

She dropped off a copy of her revised schedule with the Headmistress on her way to Charms.

She no longer had Advanced Double Potions, leaving her with a long, empty afternoon. She went back to her room and napped. She had reading, she had several reports nearly due in Herbology, two Runic translations, and an equation for Arithmancy a day overdue because she'd been in the hospital ward when she was supposed to turn it in.

She had no energy for any of it.

She slept instead.

It was late evening when she woke. The quarters smelled oppressively of nauseating potions, accentuated with the sharp tickling scent of freshly bruised leaves exposed to heat.

Without a word, she went and sat at the far end of the worktop, as far from the heat of the bubbling potions as possible.

"You were absent today," Snape said in a cold voice after several minutes. "It was a twenty point deduction."

Hermione looked up and was quiet for a moment. "I've withdrawn from Potions class," she finally said, watching him carefully to see his response.

His expression didn't so much as ripple, but his hand stilled briefly before he continued brewing.

"I can't manage the practical aspects of Potions, so it seemed like a poor use of my physical resources to continue attending," she said in a steady, matter-of-fact voice. "I've also withdrawn from DADA and History of Magic. I informed Headmistress McGonagall this morning that my workload was too much. I'm hoping to sit for the theory portion of the NEWT exams if I'm stable enough."

He was silent.

She inhaled slowly, staring at the steady blue flame beneath the silver cauldron. "I would like to continue the firecrab treatment, but I believe it's in my best interest to stop pursuing any further experimental treatment. I'd like to reach the end of term without withdrawing from any further classes."

She lifted her eyes and looked at him.

He was standing before the cauldron, the stirring rod in his fingers, frozen as though she'd petrified him.

She swallowed. "I hope you won't take offense."

He abruptly roused himself. He made a quick slashing movement with his wand, and the flame guttered out. He dropped the stirring rod into the cauldron.

"Hardly," he said in a quick rasping voice, his lip curling.

He turned on his heel and swept into his rooms, slamming the door.

* * *

**Updates weekly on Monday.**


	5. Five

Snape still kept researching Hermione's curse, but he no longer dosed her with anything or asked her to be present while he worked.

Hermione stayed in her room, studying for NEWTs or sleeping.

Being in public places in the castle was misery. At that point, most students gave her a wide berth. The other professors fussed over her and watched her carefully. 'Friends' indulged her as though every conversation were her last, or tried aggressively to cheer her up, as though optimism had healing properties. Everyone kept reminding her about what a fighter she was.

She would survive because she was a fighter, she'd been told more times than she could keep track of. The 'encouraging' sentiment was worked into almost every single letter she received from Harry, Ron, and Molly.

Which implied by extension that, when she died, it would be her fault, because she just hadn't tried hard enough.

She didn't think most people bothered to think through any of the little platitudes they kept relentlessly trying to foist onto her.

She despised all of it. It felt as though it were all performance. Everyone was just waiting for her to snap or die, or need "help" so that they could swagger over with self-congratulatory generosity, and then gossip about her condition once she was safely on her way.

Snape didn't look at her when she came into their quarters. She assumed he was offended, but she didn't think there was any point in having a conversation and confirming it.

She went straight to her room each evening after dinner and didn't re-emerge until she was headed to breakfast the next morning. He never approached her or her room, and she was careful not to disturb him or cross paths if she could help it.

She took a long nap on the day she was due for her next firecrab treatment. The door of her room was open, and the sound of bubbling potions was audible, punctured by the tap of a chopping knife and the soft clatter of stir rods.

She stared up at the ceiling for several minutes before getting up. She was starting to come to terms with the fact that she was going to die. Her shock and sense of denial had worn off, and she felt strangely placid and borderline saintly about it sometimes. She'd felt much better since she'd stopped testing potions in the hopes they'd cure her.

She hadn't considered how exhausting hope was; it was like trying to turn back a river's current.

Now that she'd stopped fighting, the current of Nyx was surprisingly endurable.

She got up and went to sit at her spot along the worktop without a word.

"Do you plan to return as Potion Master next year?" asked Hermione after several minutes of silence.

Snape's black eyes were fastened intently on a potion. "I haven't decided."

She nodded and forced a tight-lipped smile. "Just think of how much free time you'll have next year."

His eyes flashed briefly, but he didn't give any response.

"Thank you, Professor," she said after several more minutes of silence. "I know you never particularly liked me, but I do appreciate the effort you've given—and inconvenience you've endured—trying to find a cure."

He merely peered down into the potion before him without responding.

He slid the sedative across the worktop more slowly than usual with his gaze fastened probingly upon her.

She didn't avoid his intrusive eyes. There was no longer anything to hide.

She took the sedative and put the gag between her teeth before he had stepped around the worktop.

Afterwards when she was crying, he rebandaged her arm and then stood behind her, unmoving, for several minutes, apparently waiting for her to remove herself.

The realisation was accompanied by a rather chilling sense disbelief.

She could have waited longer, but she didn't want to sit there crying while he stood waiting for her to get out of the way so he could continue with his curse-breaking project in peace. Now that he couldn't use her as a test subject, she was functionally useless to him.

She only paused a moment before drawing a deep breath and pushing herself unsteadily up without a word. Her muscles and nerves were still spasming in pained objections to the treatment. It was like the entirety of her body had gone numb. The sharp, pin-pricking pain throughout her body was so overpowering she couldn't properly get a sense of her feet or legs. Her ankle rolled as she tried to put weight on it. She half-caught herself with her hands before her elbows gave out too.

She could feel herself falling but couldn't seem to make her arms react to catch herself.

She was snatched up off her feet.

"What are you doing?" Snape had caught her and dragged her up into his arms.

Hermione stared at him. She felt certain she'd missed something, but she was too tired of his spite to even begin trying to sort through any new aspects of his behavior.

He was the one who'd forced them to live together. He could live with the inconvenience of helping her get to her room once every two weeks.

She looked away and didn't say anything.

She hadn't known it was possible to already be so sick of dying and just want to be dead.

He stood in the centre of the room for several seconds, still holding her, as though undecided about what to do. He was probably trying to decide the meanest thing he could get away with.

As if being an unmitigated arse was the only line of defense to keep her from jumping him.

The absurdity of the situation suddenly struck Hermione, and her shoulders shook as she tried not to laugh aloud.

As though his niceness had been the reason she'd wanted to sleep with him in the first place.

Hermione's chest spasmed as she choked back another laugh.

Snape glanced down at her with an expression that could have been mistaken for concern, probably over her mental stability, and finally walked over to the sofa, sitting down, his arms still wrapped tightly around her as though he were endeavouring to restrain her from running off somewhere.

She could feel his fingers in her hair, near the base of her skull. The burning, tingling pain through her body kept shivering through her nerves like aftershocks. She usually passed out or fell asleep within a few minutes, before her nerves stopped twinging and burning.

She curled up tightly against his chest, waiting for everything to fade away.

Instead she stayed conscious, her head resting against Snape's shoulder.

As the minutes slipped by, she grew increasingly uncertain about what was going to happen next.

She refused to ask.

It seemed as though he was waiting for her to fall asleep.

He sat, holding her without a word. After ten minutes, his fingers began running absent-mindedly through her hair.

Her skin prickled, and her heart raced, but she stayed carefully still.

There were a little more than six weeks before the term ended. She didn't have the energy to handle re-inciting his viciousness all over again. She squeezed her eyes more determinedly closed.

Still, there was a pathetic part of her that continued to long wistfully for the brief window when he'd almost seemed interested in her—and snogged her.

Unfortunately, whatever unexpected sexual interest he'd taken in her clearly did not extend to Hermione as a person. Which in other circumstances she'd mind, but given that she was dying and suffering from an apparently irrepressible sexual attraction towards him, it seemed ideal. If he simply could refrain from despising her, they could have sex, and it would be fine.

Apparently that was too much to ask. He actively detested her, and it superseded whatever sexual attraction she was capable of inducing.

She'd never seduced anyone before. She didn't know how. If she were going to try something like that, she'd start with an easier target, like a teenage boy rather than a professor. Obviously that was operating under the supposition that she wanted to be the kind of girl who seduced people occasionally, which she wasn't sure about. Now it didn't matter; she'd never get a chance.

She sighed and glanced up.

He was staring down at her as though he were calculating something. She met his gaze, waiting for him to look away the way he generally did or to intrusively slide his mind into hers.

Instead he just kept studying her. His expression flickered briefly, and his expression became visibly resolved.

Hermione tensed instantly. Snape looking resolved never boded well for her.

His fingers slid from the base of her skull to her jaw, and his palm pressed against her cheek, turning her face up. Hermione flinched minutely but kept meeting his eyes, waiting; half-daring him to do something spiteful without any prompting.

She hadn't done anything recently for him to fault her with.

Not that it had ever stopped him before.

His face moved closer to hers, his expression intent. Her heart rate shot up and she stopped breathing, bracing herself.

Their noses bumped as his head dipped down until their foreheads touched.

He tilted his head until she felt his lips brush against hers. He kissed her slowly.

She froze, warring with herself.

He really was the most unbelievable arse. After everything he'd done lately, now he wanted to kiss her again? And he expected her to want him to? She should shove him back and slap him across the face.

She should. He really was just the worst.

Instead she found her hands tangled in his hair, kissing him so desperately it was as though she were breathing him in. She shifted, straddling him, her knees bracketing his hips as she pressed herself close. Her teeth clicked against his.

His hands were trailing along her spine. His teeth grazed her lips, and the kiss deepened, his tongue caressing hers, insinuating itself inside her mouth until her lungs began to burn.

Her fingers were on his robes, unbuttoning his waistcoat and shirt until his hands suddenly closed over hers, and he drew back.

They studied each other in silence.

A mistake. Again.

Hermione gave a short, bitter laugh and pulled her hands free with a sharp jerk, straightening her shirt as she started to stand. His hand shot out and closed around her wrist, staying her, drawing her back as he leaned forward.

"This—" he said slowly, the word strained but carefully pronounced, "stays in these rooms."

She froze, studying him, before she finally nodded without moving.

His hand rose up and ghosted along her cheek, a fingertip curling and capturing the curve of her jaw, while his index finger slid along the shell of her ear and he drew her face towards his until they were only a breath away.

"I want to call you Severus," she whispered.

He nodded as his lips sealed against hers.

She pulled at the buttons of his waistcoat and pushed his robes open as she found herself on her back beneath him on the sofa. His bare skin was smooth and warm beneath her hands. She could feel her shirt parting, and his fingers trailing along the exposed skin.

He touched her as though he intended to savour her in stages. As though she were a meal in courses.

Her clothes slipped away under his fingers as his hands explored her. She ran her hands along his pale skin, over his shoulder and down along his chest. He hissed between his teeth, and his head dropped for a moment as though he were trying to control his reaction to her.

It emboldened her.

She pulled him closer, wrapping her legs around his hips so that she could feel him as her hands captured his face and she kissed him.

His dexterous fingers peeled away the cup of her bra and curled around her breast, cupping it, and his thumb circled her areola lazily as she arched against him with a whimpering moan.

There were little electric sparks of sensation shooting through her body with every brush of his fingertips and swipe of his tongue. He pressed kisses along the length of her neck, and then drew his teeth along the juncture of her neck and shoulder so pleasurably she keened under him.

She ground her hips against his, feeling him through his trousers.

"Please, Severus," she forced herself to say rather than merely moaning incoherently under him. There was something wickedly thrilling about using his first name.

She tried to find the buttons of his trousers, but he caught her hand and pinned it over her head, staring down at her. He inhaled slowly.

"It has been sometime since I've done this. Be patient," he said. His voice almost sounded the way it used to, a smooth drawling baritone.

Hermione nodded after a moment. Instead of kissing her again, he sat up and glanced around the room. "We should do this in a bed."

Hermione started to open her mouth to offer her room, but he preempted her.

"My room," he said, standing up. He started extending his hand to help her sit up, but then withdrew it abruptly, bringing it back to his chest. His expression was suddenly contemplative again.

"Perhaps,"—his voice wavered, sounding thin and tired—"it would be better to wait. You underwent treatment tonight. Tomorrow would be more ideal—"

"No," Hermione said flatly, sitting up on her own and feeling unapologetically brazen. "We can do it again tomorrow. I want to have sex with you now."

He stared at her with an expression she couldn't interpret and finally nodded. "Fine."

He walked over to the kitchen and spent several minutes checking his potions and casting stasis spells on them.

Hermione went and stood waiting by his bedroom door.

It was one thing to kiss him and have things progress in the direction of sex. It was an entirely different matter to have mutually and verbally agreed to have sex but then decide to migrate into another room and have to stand around waiting for him to check his potions first.

Her heart was beginning to pound nervously in her chest. She'd never been in his room. She was about to go there and take her clothes off, probably be the one to take his clothes off, and proceed to have sex with him. It might be very good or just awful; with Snape those seems to be the only two options.

Perhaps wanting to do it tonight was a bad idea. She would feel considerably better tomorrow. Her nerves were still twinging, and her mind had a sort of squishy cushioning fog around it from the remaining traces of sedative that the firecrab hadn't burned away.

No. It needed to be tonight. Packing on an additional day of anxious anticipation was unlikely to improve things.

They'd have sex tonight, in his room of all places. She couldn't understand why they couldn't have sex in her room where they'd both be more comfortable. He'd never even left his door open for longer than it took for him slide his shoulders through the doorway. She'd never seen more than a few inches inside it. Maybe he had a sex dungeon in there.

She snorted to herself, she was certain that she and her perverted imagination would have noticed if there any signs whatsoever that Snape was secretly a sexual libertine.

She sighed and shifted as he continued stirring things and poking his nose into cauldrons, apparently in no rush whatsoever to pick up where they'd left off.

It was rather offensive really.

She looked down and studied her stockinged feet. He'd probably volunteered his room so that she would be the one to do the nightly walk of shame through the kitchen rather than him.

It sounded just like something he'd do.

If she wanted to have an affair with him, he'd expect her to accommodate all the inconvenience of it.

It wasn't as though he was the type who'd let someone stay overnight in his bed.

Not that she'd want to.

It wouldn't do any good to lie around developing feelings for one another. She already more feelings than she wanted to think about.

Snape—Severus, she mentally amended—didn't exactly strike her as the type who'd maintain physical contact with anyone for longer than the situation required.

She watched as he walked to the far side of the kitchen and pulled open a cabinet, taking out several potions and bringing them over to where Hermione stood waiting. He watched her take them. Blood-replenishing potion, as usual. A potion to counter the sedative. She hadn't even known he had it.

Contraceptive.

She paused briefly before taking it. Had he been planning for this after all? Or did he just habitually keep contraceptive on hand?

She decided she didn't want to know.

She restoppered the vial. Severus plucked it from her fingers, and it vanished into a pocket in his robes. He peered down at her for a moment longer before opening the door leading to his room.

Hermione stepped in first. No sex dungeon.

It was similar to her own room. More books. A large table covered with more potion supplies. The same desk, bed frame, and armchair. And a fireplace, she noted enviously. It was unlit, and the room was cool.

He closed the door behind them. She turned, looking at him. His robes were still unbuttoned, revealing a narrow strip of pale skin down the center of his chest.

He was staring at her with a predatory expression diluted with uncertainty. His mouth opened and closed several times before he spoke.

"Is the temperature comfortable for you?"

Hermione blinked. "It's fine," she said automatically without bothering to consider whether or not it actually was.

The last thing she wanted was to wait another five minutes while he fussed over the fireplace.

He stepped towards her, his fingers unfurling as his hand extended but, once again, he stopped before he touched her and drew his hand back.

"Bed," he said softly.

Hermione's heart was pounding in her chest. Now that the sedative and its pain relief were gone, she could feel her arm throbbing in the same nervous tempo as her heartbeat. She stepped towards his bed.

The sheets and bedding were white. She would have thought black or Slytherin green for some reason. Her bedding was in Gryffindor colours by default.

She looked up at him. His eyes were fastened on her, and as the back of her thighs touched the foot of his bed, he finally reached out and touched her arm, his fingers splaying and then curling around her shoulders as he guided her to sit on the edge.

He sat beside her, and his hands shifted so that her shirt slid off and down her arms.

Everything was happening so slowly it made her more intensely aware of it.

A meal.

In courses.

It also gave her mind abundant space to run away with itself. Everything she didn't want to think about but couldn't seem to ever stop thinking about...

His mouth pressed softly against her bare shoulder as he pulled her shirt off and let it fall to the floor. His fingers ran lightly along her left arm, but stopped at her elbow. His hand slipped back up to her shoulder, and his mouth journeyed slowly towards her neck.

She closed her eyes.

She could feel his tongue flicking lightly across her skin as though he were intent on tasting every inch of her. His other hand ran along her back until he found the clasp of her bra.

The band tightened around her ribs, and then it came loose, and he pulled it off of her.

Hermione's eyes opened, and she glanced down at her chest, wondering if Lily Potter had been curvier, or more fit than she was. Hermione had been curvier, before.

She forcefully banished the entire line of thought. Men did not become double-agents and work to protect a child for eighteen years because of how fantastic a witch's tits were.

Then she stopped thinking at all, because Severus had pressed her back onto his mattress and she could feel his breath across her bare skin. She shivered, and her nipples grew hard before he even touched her again.

She felt his palm press lightly against the underside of one breast as his lips nipped a meandering path across her sternum.

Her hand reached out to pull him closer, but he pushed it firmly away, back onto the mattress.

He paused. Hermione bit her lip and moaned when she felt his fingers brush closer to her nipples, but then they moved away, trailing a winding, circuitous path along her stomach.

"Please, please touch me," she said in a thick voice after the third time that his mouth brushed close but not where she wanted him.

She couldn't see his expression; his hair had fallen around him like curtain, brushing softly against her skin as his hand ran along her side.

There was a part of her that was worried he intended to draw out the foreplay with her so long she would literally die before they reached the sex part of the equation.

"I don't want to go this slowly," she finally blurted out.

He lifted his head and stared piercingly at her. She felt heat rise across her face up to her ears. She swallowed hard.

"I don't just want to lie here and have you do things to me," she said, meeting his gaze. "I want to touch you and have this be something we're—doing together."

* * *

**Updates weekly on Sunday/Monday.**


	6. Six

Severus simply stared at her without moving. Hermione reached out and caught hold of his robes, dragging him towards herself until she could kiss him again. His lips met hers, and she pushed his robes off his shoulders, running her hands over his back and feeling their bodies pressed together.

His fingers caught in her hair, and his other hand cupped her breast firmly and then tugged at her nipple so that she moaned against his lips.

His entire body was rigid above hers, and she could feel quick shudders run through him as her hands brushed along his torso. She pulled him closer until there was no space between their bodies, wrapping her arms around his shoulders and entwining their legs until she felt as though he'd swallowed her.

His hand slid down her thigh, and he shifted up as his fingers brushed across the fabric of her knickers. Hermione whimpered, her breath catching sharply in her throat as her hips shifted up to meet his touch. His fingers trailed over her covered sex; she was wet and certain that he could already feel it through her knickers as he traced along the seam between her legs

A long, slender finger pressed against her covered core, and she gasped. He caught the side of her knickers and peeled it aside, exposing her, and she could feel the cool air of his room against her bare skin. His fingers slid through her wet folds and she jerked under him, gripping his shoulders as he pressed one finger slowly inside her.

She drew a slow, unsteady breath.

She'd devoted a shameful amount of time thinking about his hands, imagining them touching her, thinking about sucking them into her mouth and running her tongue along them as she watched his expression grow ravenous; she'd envisioned innumerous ways he might conceivably touch her.

Feeling him inside her made her feel so overwhelmed she felt as though she might have a heart attack as he added another finger, and her entire body tensed around him.

She heard his breath catch between his teeth.

She reached down and found the buttons on his trousers, unfastening them quickly and pushed them down his hips, and making similarly quick work of the buttons on his drawers.

Her fingers found him, and she wrapped them around his rigid length, sliding her hand down to the base before drawing her fist up. His hips bucked against her hand, and he groaned against her shoulders, a low rasping sound that seemed torn from him. It shot through her nerves like electricity.

His fingers inside her withdrew and closed firmly around her hand, stilling her.

She could feel the ribs in his chest pressing rapidly against hers as he knelt over her, his body held taut. His breathing gradually slowed and he pulled her hand away.

Hermione raised her hips and squirmed against him. He cursed under his breath as his hips jerked against her own.

"Patience," he said, his voice a growl near her ear. His forehead was resting against her shoulder.

Hermione lay cooperatively still, wondering just how long it had been since he'd had sex. Possibly a few years or more.

His hand curved around her hip, grasping it firmly and keeping her in place as he shifted himself between her legs. She stayed still. Her heart was pounding with anticipation and she was trying to ignore the sharp, growing pain in her arm.

She was being alive.

She wasn't thinking about dying.

She couldn't stop herself from glancing down at her arm. She froze when she caught sight of a splash of scarlet, vivid again the white bandages. She lifted her head to see better, her throat tightening. She was already bleeding through. What if Severus saw it and it killed the mood the way it had last time? She almost turned her arm down to try to hide it in the sheets, but then paused. If it kept bleeding, she might stain his bedding.

It was most certainly a breach of etiquette to get cursed blood on a man's sheets, even if the curse was non-transmittable.

She bit her lip and hesitated, uncertain about what she should do. Before she could decide, a careful prodding between her legs that made her mind go blank.

Her head dropped back onto the mattress as he pushed inside of her. She gave a humming moan as his hips rolled forward, and he sheathed himself to the hilt.

She lay with her eyes closed, breathing slowly and letting her mind lose itself within the moment.

Then she opened her eyes again, finding Severus' jaw and urging him to lift his head so that she could see his face.

His eyes were closed, and his lips were just barely moving, as though he were reciting something. She couldn't make out what it was. She kissed him slowly as she wrapped her legs around him and canted her hips up against his.

He moaned against her lips as he began to meet the movement. His hands slid under her shoulders, and he gathered her tightly against his chest.

Hermione had never imagined Snape as vocal in any of her fantasies. She generally envisioned him silent, taciturn, and controlling. Instead, he groaned softly against the juncture of her neck and shoulder with every thrust.

Hermione ran her fingers through his hair and pressed kisses against his cheek.

Her body had begun to tense, heat coiling through her like golden cords of pleasure as he slid back and then pushed slowly into her again. His fingers gripped her a little more tightly each time.

This was good.

This was very good.

Her eyes fluttered closed, and she just let herself just feel, running her fingers across his shoulders, trailing over the dips and rises. The contours where his shoulder blades ended and the dip of his spine. She traced up each of the vertebrae towards his neck.

He felt so human.

Lean muscles and fine bones. He was as fragile the rest of them, as though the layers, and buttons, and billowing robes were a kind of armour that he concealed himself behind.

Yet here he was, being human with Hermione, allowing her to see a version of himself somewhat less impervious to the world than he permitted most people to witness.

She ran her hands up his neck, careful near the scarring across his throat, and lifted his chin so she could see his face again.

His eyes were still shut, and he didn't open them when she brushed their faces together.

She kissed him fiercely, wrapping her arms around his shoulders.

He drove into her harder and deeper, and she gave a low deep moan against his lips. She felt his long, slender fingers twitch and tighten around her shoulders as she rolled her hips moving against him. Her body tensed, and she gave a shivering sigh as the tension ratcheted a little higher.

His whole body shuddered, and he groaned, his hips jerking a few more times before he collapsed onto her. His ribs pressed against her chest as he panted several times. Hermione ran fingers through his hair and dropped her head back onto the mattress, catching her breath.

Maybe they could stay there for a few minutes before she left.

A minute or two wouldn't be unreasonably intimate.

Severus was still for less than a second before pulling out and tearing himself away from her.

Hermione looked up, startled.

His sallow cheeks were stained red, and his black eyes, now open again, had that familiar viciousness lurking in them as he stared down at her.

Hermione's stomach had twisted into a sharp, recoiling knot before he even spoke.

"I knew this would happen. You should have let me see to you first." His voice was vibrating with rage.

Before she could respond, he'd stood. He snatched up his robes from the bed and pulled them on, buttoning rapidly.

Hermione inhaled and then released a slow breath as she felt the heat inside her rapidly disappear like water seeping underground.

"It's fine," she said. "It's fine. This was good."

He stared at her for less than a moment before sneering. "Don't lie to me."

She rose onto her elbows, without making any effort to cover up. "I'm not lying. I mean it. I'm not"—she rolled her eyes—" coddling your ego. I wasn't expecting to have my brains shagged out. Honestly," her shoulder twitched, "I don't think I'd be physically up for that tonight. This was good."

"Be quiet!" The order was rasped but still explosive and vibrating with rage.

She sighed. This conversation was considerably more disappointing than not orgasming.

A sense of cold resentment seethed in her chest. He couldn't even be bothered to look at her face while they had sex, but he was angry she hadn't managed to climax before he did?

She sat up and straightened her knickers before pushing her skirts down. "So, I'm guessing you won't want to do this again."

She caught her clothes up off the floor and slipped her bra on before standing, her shirt gripped in her hand. She inhaled angrily and stalked past him.

As her hand grasped the knob, her shoulder was abruptly pressed against the door.

"I didn't say you could leave," he growled in her ear.

She glared at him over her shoulder. "I'm not your student here! I don't need permission." She drove her elbow back towards his diaphragm as she twisted the doorknob.

He caught her elbow before she struck him. His fingertips gripped her bandaged arm almost bruisingly before quickly softening. He snatched his fingers back, and pressed the length of his hand against her arm, brushing gently along her forearm. His head rested against the back of hers.

She briefly considered ramming her head back and breaking his crooked nose out of sheer spite.

"Wait," he said. His tone was pleading. "Wait a moment."

He sounded raw and sincerely vulnerable.

She wavered, swallowing. Her hand on the doorknob trembled as she paused, trying to collect herself.

"I don't want to do this if you're going to punish me anytime things fail to meet your precise criteria," she said, forcing her voice to stay steady.

Then she wanted to laugh, because this was Severus Snape she'd wanted to sleep with. How else would he be?

His fingers curled around her arms, and she could feel his chest pressed against her back.

"I apologise," he said after several seconds. "I can do better."

She suspected he was referring to his performance and not his attitude—which missed the entire point. But—she wanted this. She wasn't even sure why.

Hermione exhaled, feeling suddenly drained; and turned to look at him, meeting his eyes. "Alright."

His hand slid around her waist, and he pressed himself closer, his hair brushing against her face. A shiver ran through her.

"Tomorrow," she said before he could do more. "Let's try again tomorrow."

His head drew back sharply, and she saw irritation flash across his face.

"I'm tired now, Severus," she said before he could speak.

His hands dropped to his sides, and he gave a short nod.

He didn't move or speak again as she turned and slipped out the door.

She paused for a moment after she'd pulled the door shut and stood staring across the room. She drew a deep breath and let it out, gripping her shirt more tightly in her fist.

She was tired all the way into her soul.

She felt drained as she journeyed past the sofa and kitchen to her room.

Her head was light and achingly hollow when she went to the bathroom to clean up, change her clothes, and dutifully brush her teeth.

She was exhausted to the point of nausea as she sat on the edge of her bed, changing the stained bandages wrapped around her arm, and measuring out doses of all the potions that had accumulated on her bedside table.

When she finally collapsed into her bed, she was too tired to sleep.

She lay in the darkness, replaying the evening again and again as she listened to the clatter of cauldron lids and the rapid tapping of a knife blade in the kitchen.

She couldn't decide—no matter how many times she replayed it—she couldn't decide whether she should regret what she was doing.

* * *

There was a skittish sense of anticipation in her stomach when she woke the next morning. What if it ended horribly again? What if it didn't?

What would happen then, either way?

She stayed in her room reviewing homework until she heard Snape—Severus—leave for breakfast. She went out and found all the potions she was supposed to take after the firecrab treatment neatly set on the worktop.

She carefully avoided looking at the Head Table during breakfast.

She always felt better the day after treatment. It was the closest to normal she ever managed.

A little less each time since the frequency had been adjusted, but still better than any other time.

The day seemed to pass with painful torpor.

The anticipation had fully transformed into acute anxiety by dinner time. She avoided the Great Hall and went to her room for a shower, and spent a long time rebandaging her arm with layers and layers of extra gauze.

When she heard the door of their quarters slam shut, her stomach flipped and plummeted as though she'd jumped off a cliff. She considered staying hidden in her bathroom. It was still early evening; she didn't want to seem like some desperate, dying tart who was going to throw herself at Snape every time he walked through the door.

They hadn't discussed a time. He might have work to do, essays to grade, or potions that needed his attention before he was available. She stood hesitating for several minutes before she remembered with relief that she had a stack of third-year essays she'd graded for him.

She went and gathered them up, gripping them defensively against her chest as she stood in the doorway.

He immediately looked up from the potion he was working on.

"I finished these essays," she said, walking towards him.

He nodded stiffly, his expression reserved.

Her stomach fluttered as she laid the scrolls on the counter. "Do you have any others?"

"No."

Hermione stood, feeling out of place. "Alright."

Her hands dropped to her sides, and she watched the flickering flame beneath the cauldron. "Let me know when you do then… Severus."

She started to turn but paused as the flame vanished. Severus stepped around the worktop, and before she could speak, his lips had captured hers, and he was kissing her greedily. His hand gripped her waist as he backed her rapidly across the floor to his room.

"Now?" she managed to say as the door swung open behind her.

"Yes," he said against her lips before he toppled her backwards onto his bed.

He knelt over her, hungrily. His palm pressed against her throat, his fingers curved along the underside of her jaw.

His lips were burning and bruising as he plundered her mouth. As though he were laying a claim on her.

He moved down her body, skipping her breasts and stomach as he pushed her skirt up past her hips. His hands pressed her legs apart.

The lack of ceremony and matter-of-factness was overt and startling.

This wasn't intimacy.

He was proving something to himself and, incidentally, to her. She lay staring up at the canopy over his bed as his fingers trailed up along her inner thighs and she felt his breath near the apex of her legs.

There was a growing sense of fluttering anticipation in her nerves.

His hands brushed up and down her thighs, and he pulled her socks off before running his fingers back up her legs to her hips, his hand pressing against the softness of her abdomen. She sucked her stomach in nervously. His fingers caught the band of her knickers, and he pulled them down her legs, leaving her stripped from the hips down.

Her arm throbbed as her heart rate increased. She caught her lip between her teeth and felt his mouth press a trail of light kisses against her leg. There was a quick flush of heat through her body; her toes curled. She was already on a nervous edge.

Then his fingers brushed near her core and she felt him spreading her, parting her folds, splaying her open.

Her entire face grew hot, the tips of her ears burning, and she tried not to imagine the critical expression likely on his face as he surveyed her, kneeling fully clothed between her legs.

This was not what she'd wanted.

It was not even remotely in the realm of what she'd wanted or fantasised about.

She felt as though their entire—relationship?—hung in the balance, dependent on whether he could make her climax. As though that were the entire point of it all. Conditional on her failing body performing and responding for him in a certain way and on command.

She should have known better than to think having a short-term sexual relationship would somehow make the process of dying easier.

She bit her lip as a despairing realisation struck her.

She didn't want sex, not really. She just wanted something that made her feel as though her life occasionally had a point to it as it rapidly spiraled down towards its conclusion.

Why she'd settled on the idea that an affair with Snape would be ideal, she couldn't explain even to herself.

Probably because Snape wasn't even remotely romantic. He was bored and safely emotionally unavailable to her. To anyone.

It would never be anything but sexual.

Hermione already knew that it was impossible to compete with the dead.

This, however, was a mistake. Severus Snape was going not give her what she actually wanted. He had his own agenda.

There was another toe-curling sensation as she felt his lips on the curve of her mons and he pressed her legs even further apart.

She tensed and started to pull her legs together, about to sit up. He stilled her instantly as the heat of his mouth closed over her sex.

Her hips bucked reactively as she felt the tip of his tongue slide along the slit between her legs and curl against her centre. His hands slid under her legs and up around her hips to pin her firmly in place.

She felt as though she'd been struck by a lightning bolt. Or perhaps a freight train. She was bowled over so forcibly her mind went blank. Her body tensed, and her spine arched upwards as he licked, sucked and laved against her delicate, sensitive flesh with that dangerous tongue of his.

With almost terrifying alacrity, he dragged her up through a haze of blistering sensation. Teasing her, nipping at her. His face was buried between her legs, his nose pressing against the bundle of nerves as his tongue delved into her core as though he were consuming her. Then he moved back up, sucking and nibbling and swirling his tongue in impossible-seeming ways as his fingers slid into her core, pressing up against her pelvis as she climaxed with a shuddering scream.

When she managed to become aware of anything else, she found the weight of his body pressed against hers, and his mouth covered her lips as she lay panting. She could taste herself on his tongue. Her heart was pounding painfully in her chest, as though it was bruising itself on her ribs. His hands trailed languorously along her body. She could practically taste his satisfaction. Her shirt pushed up as his mouth journeyed to her throat, and she felt his teeth catch her shoulder, and he sucked hard.

She moaned beneath him, and he insinuated himself between her legs. She could feel the fabric of his robes pressing against her slick sex. He pulled her shirt and bra off over her head. She felt so overwhelmed she wasn't sure whether she was enjoying what was happening or merely swept away by it.

His hands curled around her breasts, gripping them as he kissed further down her body and then pulled a nipple into the mesmerising warmth of his mouth, his tongue flicking against it until she was writhing under him.

She tried to find the buttons of his robes and when her fingers refused to perform the delicate task of unfastening them, she just pulled, trying to tear them open.

"Take off your clothes," she finally said, her voice thick with frustration, when the buttons refused to give away. "Take off your clothes."

He lifted his head and stared blankly at her.

"I want to touch you," she said forcefully. "You got me off, now let me touch you."

He sat up, staring at her with an unreadable expression as his hand rose up and he began unfastening the series of small buttons running down his robes. Hermione lay watching while she tried to catch her breath. When he began on his waistcoat, she sat up and began unbuttoning the shirt beneath it, following his fingers. She pressed herself closer to him and brushed her lips against his throat, feeling the raised scars under her lips as she pushed his clothing down off his shoulders.

He tensed, and his fingers paused as her hand trailed down his chest. He was very thin. He was also scarred. She hadn't noticed the scars on him the night before.

He shifted away from her touch and seemed to be staring intently at an empty corner of his room as he finished unbuttoning his waistcoat.

Hermione climbed into his lap, pressing closer until their skin was touching. She wrapped her arms around him and rested her head on his shoulder. There was a long pause before she felt his shoulders shift as his hands rose up, and his hands splayed across her bare back.

She lifted her head and kissed him. Her hands slid along his shoulders and over his chest, and she felt him shudder under her hands, his hands curling against her spine and gripping her.

She drew back, studying his face. "Doesn't anyone touch you?"

He stared at her with his black eyes and they glittered disdainfully. "No. No one has ever wanted to touch me."

Her eyes widened. "I'm sorry."

His lip curled as he began to reply, but she cut him off with her lips. She kissed him until her head began to spin. He gathered her crushingly close and pressed her down onto the bed.

She ran one hand down his torso and tangled her other hand in his hair, as their mouths played against one another.

She relished the way he reacted to her. The way he'd tense, as though overwhelmed by the sensation of her touch, and then give into it with a low moan. She'd never considered Snape to be a possessive person, but he held her in his arms greedily, her entire body wrapped in his embrace.

He pushed inside her slowly, a quiet groan shuddering through him as he filled her. His eyes were closed; his forehead pressed against hers as their hips shifted and met. She whimpered under him, wrapping her arms around his shoulders and arching her back.

He moved slowly, running his long fingers along her body. Touching her until she was nearly shaking beneath him, her heart racing so quickly that her arm developed a burning throb. Reality reasserted itself as sharp as the blade of a knife.

She pulled his mouth to hers and kissed him, rolling her hips more rapidly, but he was intent on what he wanted. His hips stilled, and his hand slithered down between their bodies, his fingers stroking lightly along her mons before pressing against her in a way that made her buck sharply against his hand. Her chest was growing tight, and her breathing kept getting shorter and shorter.

The pain in her arm was beginning to stab.

She hadn't realised how tiring sex was.

She didn't remember it feeling tiring.

Then again, she didn't remember breaking sopophorous beans or climbing staircases being tiring either until she realised she could barely manage them.

She swallowed and started to ask him to stop. Before she could, his fingertips swirled around her over-sensitive centre, and she toppled helplessly into another climax with a ragged gasp.

She lay limp in a spasming pleasurable daze as he grunted low in his throat and began moving again, harder, longer thrusts that pushed her body up the bed as he gripped her zealously in his arms and came with a deep groan.

He immediately pulled out. Hermione's eyes snapped open, tensing and bracing herself as she studied his expression. He didn't look embarrassed or enraged this time. Smug. He dropped onto the bed beside her, and she could hear him panting.

She slumped back with relief.

His hand rested on her hip for a moment before withdrawing.

It was a cue to go.

She'd passed. Now she was dismissed.

She closed her eyes and exhaled heavily.

Assuming they repeated this again, she needed to ask to switch to her room. There was a low strained sensation under her ribs, and even breathing felt difficult at the moment.

The path to her bed felt unbelievably long as she lay thinking it.

She rolled onto her side but paused, waiting for her heart to stop pounding. If she stood too quickly when her heart was racing, she'd get dizzy and sometimes her vision would get spotty to the point that she couldn't see. She glanced down at her arm and noted with relief that she hadn't bled through the bandages.

Her eyes started to drift closed and she forced them open. She couldn't fall asleep in Snape's bed.

She didn't even want to contemplate how awful it would be to have him actually throw her out of his room. She didn't think she has the emotional resilience to recover if he did that.

She was freezing cold anyway. She could feel goosebumps breaking out almost painfully down her back and along her arms and legs. She shivered and braced herself to sit up.

A warm hand ran down her arm, and a blanket dropped over her. Then she felt a warm chest against her back and Severus wrapped an arm around her shoulders, pulling her closer.

She had just enough energy to register her astonishment, turning her head to look back, trying to see his face and read his intent. His eyes were closed, his arm tightened around her shoulders.

She sank back against his chest.

It stayed in their rooms. That was his only rule.

She woke, half-dazed, in the middle of the night and found him gone. The sound of clattering and bubbling potions was audible from the kitchen. She was too tired to find her clothes. She drifted off again.

She woke when he returned to bed, his arms wrapping firmly around her once more.

* * *

**Updates weekly on Sunday/Monday.**


	7. Seven

They kept having sex.

She, Hermione Granger, reputationally a good girl, was having sex with Professor Severus Snape, reputationally a dungeon bat.

They had sex both morning and evening sometimes, and it was brilliant and utterly inappropriate, and she had no intention of stopping until she was too close to death's door to continue.

After the first two nights, once Severus had proven himself to himself, it became much less tense. It had, she decided in retrospect, simply been a matter of settling things between them.

He was a generous lover. Which was initially baffling because "generous" and "Snape" was not a word association that would intuitively occur to Hermione; but then she realised that based on everything she knew of him, he had never done anything halfway in his life.

He spent an astonishing amount of time touching her. She'd wake in the morning to the sensation of his fingers tracing across her skin, his lips pressing kisses along her shoulders and spine. She'd sleepily roll over into his arms, and they'd have dreamily slow morning sex before he'd get up.

Hermione would sleep for a few hours longer before getting up to head to class.

Somehow, despite her fantasies, she hadn't considered that Severus would be someone who was intensely physical. Sensuous, yes. But not necessarily sexual.

She'd always noticed the way he moved and spoke.

"Bewitch the mind, and ensnare the senses…" what sort of person said such things to a room full of eleven year olds?

However, he'd always been entirely isolated. Not someone who touched anyone voluntarily unless there was some kind of vital necessity. She hadn't considered that it was because he didn't have anyone to touch.

Now that Hermione was someone he was permitted to indulge in physical intimacy with, it was as though he was entirely without a sense of moderation.

He touched her, greedily.

He broke his own rules.

His fingers would ghost along her waist or arms, and she would feel his breath on the back of her neck when he passed her in the corridors.

It was as though he possessed a latent possessive streak that he could no longer rein in.

Quick. Careful.

He'd been a spy. He knew how to be deceitful, all the tricks of misdirection. He was well aware of all the habits and observations of the student population.

His behavior in the castle remained entirely consistent. He was just as surly and cruelly vindictive towards the students of Hogwarts as he had ever been. No one would ever look up at him scowling wrathfully from the Head Table and imagine he was getting laid or ever had been laid.

Hermione would stare at him sometimes while eating, and, if his intrusive eyes met hers, she would cast her mind towards vividly recalling his body upon and inside hers, or his head between her legs as he brought her to climax.

His expression would instantly turn black, and he would look determinedly down at his meal.

Then, in the evening, he would punish her for it, in a variety of delectable ways.

It was exactly what she wanted.

She was so absorbed in their affair that she stopped spending all her time thinking about the fact that she was dying. There was no mental space to fret or despair over the future when her mind and body were utterly enraptured by the present.

But as the two week countdown towards her next treatment elapsed, she faded.

Over the course of the second week, day by day, she had less and less energy and strength to be reciprocal in the way she wanted to. It was more and more her lying there and having him do things to her.

Two days before treatment, she returned from class so drained she felt faint. Her heartbeat was a rapid flutter. Severus looked up from the cauldron he was working over, and then approached her, taking her hand in his and pressing a finger against her wrist, feeling her pulse for several seconds before casting a diagnostic.

"Go to bed," was all he said.

Disappointment welled up in her chest as she looked down and nodded. He released her wrist, and she went to her room, taking a vial of Blood-Replenishing potion and dropping into bed, her mind blurred with exhaustion.

She couldn't sleep deeply. Her racing heart kept waking her throughout the night, and she'd jerk awake in a cold sweat, panicking as her mind tried to make sense of the physiological symptoms she was manifesting.

Every time she woke, she would hear Severus working in the kitchen.

The next night, she fell asleep on the sofa waiting for him to return from office hours. When she woke, he was asleep beside her. She shifted over and fell back to sleep against his chest.

The evening she was due for treatment, she unwound the bandages on her arm and took the vial of sedative without a word, but his hand pressed gently against her forehead. She watched through hooded eyes as he hesitated, and his knuckles whitened before pressing the poultice against her immobilised arm.

When she shuddered and screamed from the fire burning through her veins, he wrapped his body around hers.

Afterwards, when she was trying to force herself to breathe and long wailing gasps escaped her throat, he leaned over her, his hands hovering and uncertain until she stopped shaking. He bandaged the wound, gathered her into his arms, and took her to his room. She felt his lips pressing against her forehead until she passed out.

In the morning, when she woke, she felt alive again. She rolled over and found him sleeping. She nuzzled her face against his, unbuttoning his shirt and kissing down his chest until he woke with a moan.

She touched him, trailing her fingertips across his skin and noting all the ways he responded to her.

There were less than four weeks until the end of term. She wanted to keep feeling vividly alive until she reached the end of them. There wouldn't be many diversions for her once she left Hogwarts.

She shoved the thought away.

His hand reached down and caressed her jaw; his fingers tangling in her hair. She drew her head back until she could capture his fingers in her mouth, wrapping her lips around his index finger as her tongue ran down the length of it and sucked.

She slowly pulled her mouth away from his hand and slithered down his body. He was staring at her with an expression of dazed disbelief as she knelt between his legs, gripping him in her hand and kept meeting his eyes while she slowly enveloped his cock in her mouth.

His head dropped back and his hand tangled in her hair, his fingers gripping her curls, and she dipped her head down, taking him deeper.

She'd wanted to do this since the first time, but he always woke before her in the morning, and he was much more controlling than she was. She could tell him she wanted something or didn't, but he didn't ask. He preferred her under him. He never took his robes off until she initiated it, never guided her to touch him. He usually kept his eyes closed. Somehow, she'd felt that if she asked to give him a blowjob, he wouldn't be particularly receptive to the idea.

She'd never slept with a man who didn't just assume that blowjobs were an inherent part of sex.

She traced her left hand up along his torso, and he shuddered as his hips jerked. She continued bobbing her head, slowly, trying to draw it out, hoping that eventually he would relax.

He did not.

He grew more tense with each swipe of her tongue, his fingers spasming in her hair, tugging at her.

She kept her other hand wrapped around the base, sliding up and down what she couldn't fit in her mouth.

He groaned as his stomach and pelvis grew taut and his hips rolled uncontrollably up to meet her mouth.

"Stop," he finally rasped out between gritted teeth.

Hermione shook her head slightly and swirled her tongue down along the underside as she took him as deeply as she could and then drew her head back up, sucking evenly.

He grunted forcefully and sat up, gripping her with both hands as though he intended to rip her off, and his cock throbbed in her mouth, and she felt him come. He held her head between his hands, holding her in place as his entire body shuddered and he came down her throat.

He pulled her off, panting. His fingers caressing her face, running along her cheekbones and jaw.

"You shouldn't have," he said.

She sat up, swallowing. "Why not?"

He dropped back on the bed, his chest still rising and falling heavily. "There was no need to."

She curled up against him, her head on his shoulder, feeling tired again. His fingertips trailed in circles along her arm.

"I wanted to," she said, relaxing against him, her eyes drifting shut. "I want you to have good memories of me."

* * *

"Where do you intend to go following graduation?"

Hermione glanced up at Severus.

It was the weekend. He had been unusually quiet for the last several days. Withdrawn. She'd ignored it, assuming it was another dead-end in the experimental potions he continued to brew in his spare time.

Whatever it was, it was probably depressing and not something she wanted to think about or talk about.

When he asked the question, Hermione was seated at the far end of the worktop, grading a final batch of second-year essays. Her arm was getting tired, and her notes were teetering on the verge of illegible, but she'd obstinately continued, determined to finish them.

She paused and set down her quill, a low sinking sensation creeping over her.

This was a conversation she kept intending to have and then delaying because she felt angry every time she had to think about it.

"The Weasleys expect me to live with them," she said without looking up. "Harry already lives there. It seems—the natural thing to do."

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw him set down his stirring rod.

The sinking sensation intensified. Did this conversation have to require his undivided attention?

She stared at the quill, carefully straightening several barbs. "I've actually been meaning to talk to you about graduation. NEWT exams are next week. I think it might be ideal to undergo another treatment before they begin, so I'll have more energy for them. That will also put me on schedule to have the last one just before the Leaving Feast and school ends."

There was a pause.

"The last treatment?" He spoke slowly. Because it was the weekend, his voice was stronger and clearer than usual. It almost sounded the way it used to.

Hermione gnawed at her lip, drawing in a sharp, deep breath. "Yes," she said with a nod. "I don't think it makes sense to continue treatment once I'm at the Weasleys. I wouldn't really want to keep doing it—once I'm there. I think it would be upsetting for them to see it. And it would draw things out for longer than I want to."

She glanced briefly up at him.

He was staring at her, his expression inscrutable. "How long do you intend to stay there?"

Her head jerked a little and she swallowed. "They—they expect me stay at the Burrow until I deteriorate to the point that I need hospice care. Molly wanted me to stay on till the end, and just have healers visit, but I said I'd prefer not to."

He blinked. "A hospice?"

She nodded without meeting his gaze. "There are a few I'm considering. Molly and I are going to visit them after I graduate in order to have everything arranged ahead of time. And—" she licked her lips "—Harry and Ginny are getting married this autumn. They were planning for next summer, but they bumped it up—to make sure I'll be there." She didn't look up but forced her voice to brighten. "You'll probably get an invitation over the summer holidays."

She tapped her fingernail rapidly on the worktop until a movement in the corner of her eye made her glance up. Severus was drifting towards her, his expression still unreadable. However, there was a sharpness in his gaze that Hermione recognised from years as a detested student under his tutelage.

Irritation and viciousness just waiting for an excuse to lash out.

She shriveled instantly, a shudder running through her gut as her skin prickled.

"You hadn't mentioned that you'd made that decision." His tone was suspiciously casual.

Like a trap. Something intended to seem innocent.

Hermione grew more tense. Where had he thought she was going to go?

Her heart began to pound more and more rapidly. "What decision?"

"The decision," his voice was soft and deadly, each word carefully pronounced, "to live at the Weasleys once you leave Hogwarts and then die in hospice, rather then go to _any _of the clinics I have recommended."

There was a sudden dropping sensation in the pit of her stomach as she stared at him.

"But I told you," she said, her mouth dry and her throat tightening. "Over a month ago. I told you I didn't intend to keep pursuing a cure."

His head tilted sharply as he stared down his nose at her. "When?"

She wetted her lips and stared up at him. "Right here in this kitchen. After I told you I'd withdrawn from Potions. I said I didn't intend to pursue treatment anymore and that I hoped you weren't offended, and you said—" her throat caught and she couldn't breathe for a moment, "—you said, 'hardly.'"

He blinked and just stood staring at her, appearing to turn several shades paler.

Hermione wanted to bolt but she forced herself to stay seated. He was looking at her as though what she was saying was entirely revelatory, which was unsettling to put it mildly.

She was sure that he, of all people, understood plainly that she was dying. That she would die in the near future—certainly within the next year. She'd assumed that he'd known longer than she had, with greater certainty than even she did. He was the one with scrolls upon scrolls of analysis and fruitless hours of research that she'd napped through.

She was positive he knew. His undeniable shift from treating her like an inconvenient nuisance to someone who merited his occasional sympathy had been the most damning death knell possible.

His lips parted and twitched before he spoke. He raised a pale hand and pressed it against the side of his throat. "I assumed that it was a temporary decision until you had taken your NEWTs," he said at last.

"No. It was permanent." There was an uncontrollable tremor underlying her voice.

His expression twitched, and his hand disappeared into his robes. The fact that he wasn't being cruel yet was worse, because she just kept recoiling and bracing herself more with each progressing moment.

She drew a short gasping breath and rage unexpectedly flooded through her. Her fingers curled around her quill crushing it.

"What did you think I was going to do? Just keep trying and trying to find a cure until everyone else gives up first?" Her voice dripped with bitterness. "Wait until everyone else wants me dead?"

His eyes narrowed and hardened.

"There are options worth pursuing," he said in an unexpectedly measured tone. "The clinics I have recommended have specialisation and resources—which I cannot offer."

"And—" she said, the word sharp, "—if I choose one and go, and their treatment doesn't work, I'll die there. I've done my research; the odds that I survive at all are negligible, and even if I survive, chances are that I'll be vegetative or barely more than a shell. Not dying is not the same as being alive."

Her heart was pounding, and her chest felt tight, as though it couldn't draw the oxygen she needed. Severus' continuous ominous silence made her keep shriveling internally.

She forced herself to breathe more steadily.

"It's my death," she said after a long oppressive pause. "I think I'm well within my rights to want to die on my own terms. I'm not obligated to die in a way that meets the emotional needs of other people. Especially—" her voice grew so sharp it vibrated the air "—when almost none of them gave a damn about meeting mine when I was standing in front of them!"

She stood up.

"I don't—want to talk about this again." Her voice was stilted, and all the words came out jerkily. "I—I thought you knew. I assumed you'd understood this for the last month."

She fled to her room and slammed the door. Her head felt light, and she went and snatched up one of the vials of blood-replenishing potion she kept on her desk.

There was a sharp rap on the door half an hour later.

Severus stood, looming in the doorway, his shoulders drawn rigidly up in the intimidating posture he regularly employed in class. His face was sallow, and there was a seething rage hanging about him. She stared at him, bracing herself, until he spoke.

"You said to me that you don't want to die. When I asked what you wanted, you said—" he half-snarled the word, "—you didn't want to die."

His tone was accusing and resentful. As though he'd caught her in the act of willful deception.

Hermione shifted, her right shoulder twitching. She had a stress-induced migraine that was steadily engulfing her brain.

"Sometimes people change their minds about things." She eyed him pointedly. "Just because something's true at one point, doesn't mean it always will be. However, I don't _want_ to die. I'm not dying because I want to. I am dying. Regardless of how hard I try not to, regardless of how I feel about it: I am dying."

The corner of Severus' eye twitched slightly every time she said 'dying.'

She glanced away from him and stared at the floor. "I decided to just accept it rather than waste my limited remaining time denying the inevitable.

"Why?" His tone was deadly.

Hermione looked back up at him. Her head throbbed, feeling achingly hollow.

His eyes were glittering, and his expression was black, his jaw set mulishly as though he had already decided not to accept whatever answer she chose.

"Because I'm tired, Severus. I am always tired." She closed her eyes, trying to relieve the strain behind them and giving a low scoff. "I don't think you realise how exhausting it is to want to live when you're dying."

When she opened her eyes, she found his eyebrows furrowed into a deep V as he stood studying her. His pale fingers unfurled, stark against his black robes, and he seemed on the verge of reaching towards her, but then his fingers curled into a fist that vanished back into his robes.

He turned, glancing at the kitchen for a moment. He seemed to be calculating something.

"Why didn't you say anything sooner?" he finally said.

She gripped the doorframe. "Say anything about what?"

He glanced back at her, visibly irritated. "You have watched me continue to spend my time seeking a cure without comment." His lip curled. "Did it never occur to you that I may be unaware your decision was permanent. Perhaps you assumed"—his eyes raked wrathfully from the top of her head down to her toes—"that I had nothing better to do."

Hermione felt the blood drain from her face.

Her chest gave a small spasm, and her throat closed briefly. Then heat flooded into her cheeks, and she lifted her chin with a jerk, meeting his glittering black eyes.

She gave a quick laugh. "Are we going to stand here and pretend that you came to the hospital ward after I fainted in Potions class because you cared at all about whether I lived or died?"

His nostrils flared, and he started to reply.

"Don't—" she cut him off, her own voice implacably cold. "Don't lie to me about why you offered. I was diverting." She gave another sharp laugh. "I should clarify, my arm was. A welcome distraction from the job you'd always despised. Something to do—now that the war's over. I was just the inconvenient person attached to an interesting problem." She gestured at the kitchen behind him. "You didn't decide to do this because you cared about me."

Her lungs ached as though she'd been holding her breath. She kept meeting his eyes. "Did you think I couldn't figure that out? That I'm like Harry, and I assume everything is about me because I'm so special to everyone?" Her jaw threatened to tremble, and she scoffed. "It wasn't as though you ever tried to hide it."

He paled and a low colour rose in the hollows of his cheeks.

Hermione swallowed and blinked, her fingers gripping the doorknob more tightly. "It's fine. I didn't really want you to care. I liked that you weren't pitying like everyone else." She looked away. "My decision to stop pursuing a cure really didn't have anything to do with you. I'm sure it doesn't necessarily feel that way, but it really wasn't related to anything you did."

She dipped her head down and inhaled deeply. Her skull felt as though it were being crushed, and her eyes were beginning to burn. "I think I need to lie down."

He was still standing motionless outside of her door as she closed it.

* * *

**Updates weekly on Sunday/Monday.**


	8. Eight

Once the door was closed, Hermione stood for several seconds, staring at it, never wanting to open it again. She had the distinct impression that the conversation with Severus was not over; that it would resume the moment he laid eyes on her.

Now he cared about the fact she was dying?

She gave a half-hysterical laugh and buried her face in her hands as her shoulders shook

She shouldn't have started sleeping in his bed. She should have gotten up and gone back to her room that second evening. That was probably what caused things to start coming across wrong. That was what had made it seem like they were something more than a fling.

It wasn't as though they had a relationship. It was just sex.

He didn't even look at her face most of the time.

He permitted her to call him Severus, but he'd never used her first name.

Not even once.

He didn't call her anything at all in private. No pet name. No first name. Nothing.

It was just sex. It had always just been sex.

His inquiry about where she intended to go following graduation was the first personal question he'd ever asked. He'd never bothered to know anything about her.

Not that anyone ever seemed to care about knowing about her. She doubted that even Harry or Ron could provide her parents' names if pressed.

Her chest spasmed again, and she pressed the heels on her hands against her eyes. She wasn't going to cry. She wouldn't.

It would all be over soon.

She had things to do; reading, notes to review, lists to go over. Instead she curled up in her bed and stared at the far wall. Her heart kept pounding in a rapid staccato that was making her hands shake.

She closed her eyes and exhaled unsteadily. Even lying down, the room was rotating slowly.

There was a part of her that was beginning to fervently wish she'd just die in her sleep before she left Hogwarts.

There was a crumpled invitation on her desk from Kingsley Shacklebolt as Minister of Magic, informing her that the Ministry would be honoured to have her visit in order to set up a sub-branch in the Department of Magical Creatures specifically for house-elves. The sub-branch would be named for Hermione.

The saliva in her mouth turned sour every time she thought about it.

She didn't want her 'memory' to be the difference she made with her life.

She didn't want to go to the Ministry so Kingsley Shacklebolt or anyone else could be photographed smiling benevolently and posing beside her while she cut ribbons for them.

She wasn't a prop for Ministry reform. Dying wasn't a PR opportunity for other people. If they actually cared about house-elves they could have already started the sub-branch and named it for Dobby.

No one in the Ministry had cared a whit about house-elves until word got out that Hermione Granger was dying.

It was a bribe. They were trying to buy her; secure her political endorsement before she conveniently took herself off to the afterlife.

She was certain that enthusiasm for her vision for Ministry reform would be tepid if anyone in the Ministry expected her to live long enough to work there.

She didn't want to be the Wizarding world's most tragic martyr, whose name could be conveniently trotted out for whatever vaguely reform-sounding issue people thought they could get away with using her to prop up.

But—if she said no, she wouldn't get to make any difference at all.

She nearly set the invitation on fire when she opened it, then sat in her room seething with rage, fighting back guilty tears over her rage. She knew that she was being unreasonably angry, but she couldn't stop. It wasn't _fair _.

She squeezed her eyes shut so that she couldn't see the invitation where it was still sitting on her desk.

There was another sharp knock on her door in the middle of the night. She went blurrily to the door, rubbing her cheek and feeling creases from the pillowcase pressed into it.

A cloud of amalgamated potion fumes struck her forcefully when she opened the door. Severus was standing there, looking as though someone had dumped a bucket of water over his head. His hair was hanging in limp strands around his face, and his skin was visibly shiny and damp from potion steam.

The kitchen looked as though a bomb had gone off. All the furniture had been shrunk and shoved against the far wall, there were several new tables, covered with cauldrons of all shapes and sizes, and ingredients messily scattered across the surfaces.

"Take these," he said without preamble, holding several potions towards her.

Hermione blinked. She was so exhausted, it was as though she could feel her life slipping away like sand in a hourglass.

Under better circumstances they could be asleep together right now, rather than doing—whatever the thing was that they were currently doing.

There was a tearing sense of wistfulness in her chest.

All she wanted were simple and uncomplicated things that felt good. It didn't seem like a horribly unreasonable thing to want for just a little while.

She didn't want to think about whether or not she wanted a legacy, or who should be responsible for it. She didn't want to think about ribbon cuttings at the Ministry or living in the Burrow being coddled and indulged by everyone.

Now the one, simple, uncomplicated thing she'd had was ruined. Or maybe it never had been simple or uncomplicated at all.

Severus looked disconcertingly manic as he pushed three vials towards her.

She held out her hand to ward him off.

"I'm not doing this anymore, Severus. I won't." Her throat tightened.

His expression narrowed and his mouth twitched almost imperceptibly.

"These are not experimental potions." His voice was a low snarl. "Take them. Now. They must be consumed at night in order to take effect during the day."

Hermione sighed and stared at the colorful potions gripped in his hands. She didn't really want to fight him over two separate things if she could help it, even if they were undoubtedly related. If she could be cooperative in one regard, perhaps he would be less unpleasant about the other.

"What are they?"

He drew himself up, clearly irritated that she wasn't just obediently drugging herself at his behest. "They're intended to improve your physical and mental energy."

Hermione perked up with interest. She eyed the potions more curiously and started to reach for them before she stopped herself, her fingers only a few centimetres from his.

"You never offered them before."

He stiffened and the vials in his hand shifted audibly against each other in his hand. "They'll have the side-effect of making your health difficult to accurately monitor. It will be easier to physically overextend yourself without realising it. However—they should help as you prepare to take your exams."

Hermione eyed him for a moment before holding out her hand. He unstoppered and gave them to her one at a time.

The first went down easily, it tasted purple and felt strangely sentient as it moved in her mouth and then slid down her throat. The next one had the texture of raw egg white and stuck to her inside of her mouth and her teeth, causing her to gag as she forced it down. The third was searingly spicy and went up her nose, causing her stomach to curdle.

She stood gagging and wiping her eyes and nose while Severus kept peering down at her appraisingly. She sniffed a few times waiting for her eyes to stop watering.

"You may return your bed," he said after a moment, turning away and walking back towards the kitchen.

Hermione went to the bathroom for water to wash away the taste in her mouth.

She cringed when she caught sight of her reflection. She had to lean close to the glass because her vision had grown somewhat blurry during the last few weeks. Her hair looked like a hedgerow someone had endeavoured to hack apart with a kitchen knife. It was so tiring to comb. Her clothes were rumpled, and there were dozens of creases from her pillowcase indented in her right cheek.

She washed her face and brushed her teeth dutifully before going back to bed. She could still hear Severus in the kitchen until she fell asleep again.

In the morning she woke up feeling as though the whole world were flooded with light and colour for the first time in years. She practically leapt out of bed and skipped to the bathroom.

She took a shower without feeling exhausted by the mere act of working shampoo into her hair. She doused her tangled curls liberally in potion and went through the arduous task of working all the knots out.

She worked at her hair until she could run her comb from her scalp to the tips of her hair without snagging, and braided it. Normally her arms would be shaking with exhaustion by the time she finished, but she still felt full of energy.

She had to remind herself not to go overboard. She dressed, packed her school bag, and exited her room.

Severus was already up and working in the kitchen; possibly he'd been there the whole night. He looked up from the potion he was brewing. His coal black eyes locked on her, and he studied her carefully before looking back down at the cauldron before him.

Hermione approached cautiously. "I'm feeling better today, thank you."

The corner of his mouth twitched minutely, but he gave no response.

Hermione stared at him, trying to determine exactly what he was planning. "Did you sleep last night?"

He snorted and nodded without looking up. Hermione felt doubtful.

She ran her fingers along the strap of her bag, hesitating for several seconds. "I'll see you after classes then."

She had to keep reminding herself throughout the day that she could overextend herself if she wasn't careful. She never felt tired. She could run up the steps and carry entire armfuls of books, and she never felt strained by any of it.

She took scrolls and scrolls of notes during the final review classes that she had.

She hadn't remembered that feeling alive could be this way. She ate breakfast and lunch ravenously while her classmates looked on with concern.

Severus didn't return to their rooms that evening, although Hermione waited nervously for him for several minutes after dinner before belatedly remembering that he had office hours and detentions to oversee.

She stood and wandered around the kitchen, glancing at the various potions simmering or sitting in stasis, and reading the spiky notes scrawled in books and all over dozens of scrolls.

She could feel the potions' effects wearing off. Her head was beginning to feel throbbingly hollow. The lights overhead were too bright and the beams blurred and refracted in her vision.

She glanced down at her arm and realised she'd bled through the bandage. There was a large, pale pink stain across most of her forearm. She hadn't noticed before because the blood was so pale.

She took another vial of Blood-Replenishing Potion and sat on the edge of the sofa to change the gauze and bandaging.

Her blood trickled from the incisions almost as thin and clear as water.

She stared at it for several seconds. She should tell Severus. He'd need to alter the Blood-Replenishing Potion again.

Another potion for him to spend hours on for her.

She gnawed at her lip as she sat thinking. She felt as though she'd found herself mired up to her throat. She was certain that the potions last night were some scheme he was coming at sideways. Attempting to bribe her into cooperation? To make her remember how good she could feel?

Her head dropped down to rest in her hands as she tried to think through what her next steps should be.

He'd expected her to go abroad. Before they'd even kissed, he'd advised her to withdraw and head to the States.

Ironically, the packet of information on the clinic had been what forced her to realise what impossibly small odds she had of surviving. Severus was usually vague about it. She'd known that many healers regarded her case as hopeless, but she hadn't studied the numbers until she flipped through the intake forms that required her acknowledgment that the treatment was highly experimental with no guarantee of success and read through the pages and pages of potential side-effects.

The odds were ridiculous. She couldn't understand why Severus wouldn't acknowledge that.

He was attached to the idea of Hermione's survival.

He'd been unwillingly brought back from the brink of death by a phoenix. Harry survived a Killing Curse when Severus had assumed he'd die.

Hermione had become someone who should survive in his mind.

A hollow dropping sensation cut through her chest under her ribs. She gave a shaky gasp and wanted to crawl into a hole.

She was a replacement Lily. A Muggle-born witch he was determined to successfully save this time around.

And Hermione had proceeded to initiate an affair with him. She felt as though she might be sick. She pressed her hand over her mouth and forced herself to swallow, wanting to scream.

Now he was trying to convince her to keep pursuing a cure by drugging her with what were likely illegal—or at least highly-regulated—potions in order to remind her how good it could feel to be alive.

She gave a shaky, despairing laugh and stood.

She didn't want to wait for him to come back any more. She didn't want to see him at all.

She went to bed.

He knocked at her door several hours after curfew. The room spun and swayed under her feet as she unsteadily stood up and went to the door.

"You have to take these at night if you want them to have effect during the day," he said the instant he laid eyes on her, potions gripped in his hands once again. His voice was tired and rasping.

Hermione looked at him, feeling as though there were a stone lodged down in the base of her throat. She tried to swallow and speak but she didn't have the energy to say all the words; to hear his response; to argue…

She extended her hand slowly and took the vials from him.

"Thank you," she said without meeting his eyes.

His expression tightened, and he reached forward, one cool hand pressing against her forehead. She felt his fingers on her pulse. He stepped closer to her.

"You shouldn't have gotten out of bed," he said.

Hermione rolled her eyes; he was the one who knocked on the door. He pulled the potions out of her hands and half-carried her to her bed, fastidiously tucking her under the blankets. He spent several minutes casting diagnostic spells on her and prying her eyes open in order to inspect their dilation.

He gave a low sigh and sat back, staring at her for several moments, appearing to hesitate before he extended his hand and offered the potions to her.

Afterwards he sat holding her hand for several minutes under the thin guise of retaking her pulse. Hermione buried her face in her pillow and couldn't keep herself from wrapping her fingers around his wrist as well.

When she woke in the middle of the night, he was seated on the floor of her room, her hand still in his, and his head resting against the edge of the mattress as he slept.

Hermione reached for him instinctively, brushing his hair back from his face. "Severus…"

His eyes opened, and his head snapped up.

She gripped his hand tighter. "Don't sleep on the floor. Get into bed."

He was tired enough not to be resistant. He got up stiffly from the floor, and she pulled him down onto the mattress beside her. She buried her face against his shoulder. He smelled of tinctures and bitter herbs. His hand reached out and touched her head gingerly before they curled into each other's arms, her head against his chest.

She would talk to him tomorrow, she promised herself.

* * *

Tiny little frissons of pleasure rippled through her body. Fingers trailing along her arms and back, and soft lips brushing and nipping at her neck.

It was hazy and delightful. The unrushed touch. She woke gradually in little waves, like a slowly rising tide.

"Severus…" she said, smiling and half-asleep, and ran her fingers through his hair as he kissed down the valley between her breasts. His long fingers were wrapped around her shoulders in that way she'd come to love.

She felt her pyjamas sliding open and felt his body between her legs.

Her eyes fluttered open, and she watched through hooded eyes as he slithered down her body. She hooked her heels behind his hips and drew him back up, wrapping her arms around his neck and kissing him.

His weight was comforting as he rested on her body and returned her kiss. His fingers pressed against her cheeks, cradling her face in his hands.

She impulsively gripped him a little tighter with her legs and rolled, flipping them so that she was straddling him as she leaned forwards, still kissing him, and quickly unfastened the buttons of the robes he'd slept in.

She kissed quickly down his jaw and then slowly and softly pressed her lips against each of the scars on his throat, before sliding her body down along his.

He caught her wrists in his hands. "You shouldn't overexert yourself, the potions—

She cut him off with a kiss, ignoring the guilty twisting sensation in her lower abdomen. Her forehead pressed against his for a moment as she closed her eyes and exhaled.

"I'll be fine, Severus," she said before sitting back and continuing to unbutton his robes. It was obvious by his expression that he was about to argue with her. She looked down and brushed her fingers along the pale skin from his chest down to his stomach. "I've wanted to do this. We can do it once, can't we?"

Her eyes flickered up to his face again, and she watched his lips twitch as he hesitated and then nodded slowly. She gave a quick smile as she slid her body further down his, kissing across his chest and letting her fingers trail across his skin.

He didn't shudder at her touch any longer, but she still felt his breath catch at contact.

Touching.

Being touched.

She hadn't considered there being an emotional distinction between the two until Severus.

Such a lonely life, not having anyone to hold you.

She paused and rested her face on his chest, listening to his heartbeat, her arms framing his shoulders.

In another life, under some other kind of strange circumstances in which he'd accidentally let her into his life, she could have loved him.

If there had been a different opportunity to get to know him and see the lonely, half-feral, and intensely sensitive man concealed beneath three layers of fastidiously buttoned robes and bone-corroding sarcasm, she would have loved him. She wouldn't have cared whether anyone approved or understood it. She would have just loved him.

...in a different life.

Not the very short one she had.

This wasn't a life in which she got to love people, not lastingly.

She pushed herself up and preoccupied herself with getting his robes off until the hollow ache in her chest subsided. Then she looked up again, meeting his eyes and giving a fleeting smile.

He was already aroused, and he'd gotten her more than sufficiently ready before she'd been fully awake. She shimmied out of her pyjama bottoms and sat straddling him. She leaned forward, pressing her open palm against his chest, her fingers outstretched as she trailed across his skin, shifting up and then slowly sinking down.

Her room was just beginning to be bathed in golden light from the eastern window. She rolled her hips, and her breath caught, her eyes fluttering closed as she focused on the sensation and the rhythm of movement.

His long slender fingers wrapped around her hips, urging her and guiding her. His hips rolled up to meet her pelvis and she gave a low humming moan and tightened around him until he groaned between his teeth.

She leaned forward, resting her hands on his shoulders, looking at his face. His eyes were open.

He was watching her, studying her, with his dark, unwavering gaze.

* * *

**Updates weekly on Sunday/Monday.**


	9. Nine

"Go back to sleep," Hermione heard Severus say firmly after she slumped off his body and onto the bed.

"I'm fine," she said, her voice half-muffled in the pillow.

She felt him pull the bedding up over her shoulders.

"Go to sleep," he said again in a tone of finality. "The house-elves will bring breakfast. You have no classes until past-noon; there is no reason for you to get up."

She wanted to argue, but she was tired, even with the potions. She'd probably pushed much too far the day before.

She nodded reluctantly and began drifting off before he'd left her room.

She knew she needed to confront him, to tell him that he wasn't going to change her mind with more potions, but it was easier not to.

It wasn't a fight she wanted to have with him; not while they were living in close quarters, and she was preparing to take her NEWTs. If he was going to be viciously enraged and disappointed in her, she would rather have it happen when she was leaving and wouldn't have to stay and endure it in front of the entire school.

That was the excuse she gave herself every evening when she accepted the potions without a word, and every morning when she woke in his bed.

It was better that way. Once he was done being angry, he'd be glad that they didn't spend her last two weeks at Hogwarts engaged in a cold war.

She didn't tell him that her blood was nearly translucent, or that her heart almost constantly raced and made her feel like she couldn't properly breathe.

She didn't want things to be drawn out once she left Hogwarts.

She'd press her right hand soothingly against her throbbing injury and ignore the cloud of dread growing in her mind.

NEWTs. That was what she needed to focus on.

She'd deal with everything else after the exams.

She only had to keep everything under control for a little longer.

* * *

She fainted halfway through exams week, in the middle of the Transfiguration NEWT.

When she woke in the hospital ward, Severus was standing over her, his black robes drawn around him.

His eyes were fastened on her face, and his expression was closed and unreadable.

They stared at each other in silence for a long time until she glanced around to see if there was anyone nearby and smiled tentatively up at him, extending her hand.

He hesitated for a moment before his pale fingers emerged from the billowing sleeves, and he sat on the edge of the bed, taking her hand in both of his.

She sat up, still studying him wordlessly. His expression was very withdrawn, even for him.

"It was my heart, wasn't it?" she finally asked.

He gave a short nod without meeting her eyes.

"How many exams did I miss?"

"...Four."

She'd been unconscious for two days then.

She looked down and gave a light, despairing laugh under her breath. Of course she'd end up missing almost half of the NEWT exams she'd stayed in Hogwarts to take.

That would be what would happen to her.

She slumped forward and rested her forehead on his shoulder, not really caring if anyone happened to witness it.

There was a long silence before she spoke again.

"Will you come see me sometimes, Severus? Once I've graduated?"

After a pause, she felt him give the barest nod.

Her eyes drifted shut, and she swallowed the other things she wanted to say.

_Find a new job. Do something you enjoy with the rest of your life. Get a cat; you need companionship. _

She didn't say anything else, and neither did he.

She hadn't really expected him to.

He was still withdrawn when she returned to their quarters. He would work for hours stooped over the cauldrons and disappear into his rooms without a word. He wasn't proactively unpleasant; he barely acknowledged Hermione at all.

He simply radiated hurt.

He still left the potions out on the worktop for her, but he didn't look at her, or speak to her. She felt almost invisible at times.

It was a better set of circumstances than she'd hoped but still disheartening as the final days of term drew close and the preparations for the Leaving Feast got underway.

Hermione began her goodbyes, getting inundated with little gifts and enchanted trinkets she had no use for. She had twenty copies of Hogwarts: A History piled on the corner of her desk.

It was emotionally draining. Many of the students and professors would begin crying whenever they spoke to her at all.

She'd heard rumours that McGonagall intended to make a speech about her at the Leaving Feast, and that the prefects were "planning" something, which was enough to make Hermione want to skip the evening altogether.

She didn't take any off the additional potions Severus continued to leave for her. She tucked them all away in a box.

After two days of doing nothing but having people cry over her when they happened to see her, she didn't want to see anyone.

She forced herself to get out of bed and go into the kitchen on the day she was due for her last treatment. Her room and almost all her possessions were packed.

The Leaving Feast would happen the following evening, and the next morning she'd board the Hogwarts Express bound for London.

Severus didn't look at her as she took her usual place along the worktop. The poultice was nowhere to be seen.

She sat in silence for several minutes, waiting for him to either drive her off, or start making it, or do something to acknowledge that she was there.

He continued to ignore her as the clock on the wall steadily ticked out the progressing seconds.

Two more minutes, she decided after eight had passed, then she'd just go back to bed.

The seconds continued to slip by and there were only a few remaining when Severus abruptly turned and pulled out a familiar cauldron and a large, heavily padded stoneware crock emitting small wisps of smoke.

He transferred the firecrab glands into a pestle wandlessly and began crushing them. The air filled with a heavy sulphuric scent. After he'd poured the glands into the cauldron along with an entire sloth brain, he gave a quick flick of his wand and conjured a low, steady flame.

He brewed hunched over the cauldron, his shoulders rolled forwards and his eyes peering down into the contents, still without any acknowledgement that Hermione was in the same room.

There was a heavy sinking sensation distributed throughout her chest and stomach as she sat watching him.

This would be goodbye. One last, wordless treatment; he'd move her back into her room, and that would be the last time she ever saw him alone.

Of course he would make it like that.

Snape had never bothered with seeing graduating students off. He was never going to come to the Burrow to visit her or attend Harry's wedding. She couldn't imagine him inquiring into which hospice she had been sent to once she was nearly dead.

Which was fine.

It was preferable for his last memories of her to be when she still had a bit of life left.

She drew a deep breath and looked up to find him frozen over the cauldron, staring at her. His mouth opened as though he'd started to speak and then stopped himself before any sound had emerged.

"You aren't taking the potions any longer," he finally said.

She nodded in acknowledgment. It had been obvious that she wasn't, so it was clearly not what he'd intended to say.

"I'm saving them. There are a few things I think they'll be useful for. The wedding. And I'm—" she swallowed and forced a smile, blinking, "—they're naming a sub-branch of the Ministry after me. I'm going to cut a ribbon for it."

She made her voice to brighten as though it was funny. "You were right—everyone's going to forget what an insufferable know-it-all I was." Her chest spasmed. "In a few years—I won't be anything but a sanitised little war-heroine."

Her throat felt thick, and she looked determinedly at the wall over his shoulder as tears pricked her eyes. She wouldn't cry. She refused to.

He stood staring at her for a long time without blinking, his stirring rod still held in mid-air.

Hermione looked down, clearing her throat. The sound seemed to startle him from his reverie.

He set the stirring rod down and extinguished the flame under the cauldron before walking around the worktop and stopping only a few inches away from her.

Hermione stared up at him, and he inhaled, nostrils flaring.

Then he abruptly sat down on the stool beside her, picked up her left hand, and held it in both of his, his thumb rubbing across the back of her hand. Hermione looked up at him with a fragile sense of expectancy. Her stomach fluttered when he avoided her eyes and stared down at her arm.

"I did not select and recommend clinics for you without careful consideration," he said at last in an entirely measured and detached voice.

Hermione's heart sank, and she almost pulled her hand away. He seemed to sense it, and his fingers tightened.

"I realise that you hoped I would provide a cure while you remained at Hogwarts, and I have been—unable to do so. However, I do not give professional recommendations lightly. It is my belief that you could survive and recover from the curse if you would consider what I've advised."

Hermione started to open her mouth, but Severus doggedly continued.

"Their morbidity and mortality statistics may not be ideal, but they are the best of the options available, and _any _choice"—he emphasised the word heavily—"would have a more positive outcome than waiting to die."

Hermione opened her mouth again, but he still didn't appear to notice.

"I have endeavored to be understanding of the emotional and physical toll of your condition"—his mouth was twisted in a strange way that gave the impression that he was enjoying his speech about as much one would enjoy a tooth-extraction—"however, it is short-sighted to resign yourself with death because you chose the undue strain of remaining a full-time graduating student at Hogwarts. I—regret that I did not advise your immediate withdrawal when your condition was discovered. However, this is not and has never been a personal recommendation. I am not advising you on the basis of any personal preference; I strongly believe you could survive and recover if you would consider my professional advice on this matter."

There was a long pause, the speech apparently concluded.

Hermione felt as though there were a stone lodged in her throat as she firmly pulled her hand free from him.

"I don't want to go to America, Severus. I am perfectly aware that my odds of survival are better if I pursue a cure than if I don't," she said, her voice even as she forced herself to mirror his detached tone.

His expression instantly grew black.

"I don't want to go," she said again, her voice shaking slightly. "It doesn't matter how professional your opinion and advice is; I don't have any intention of ever going abroad to try to find a cure."

"Why—" his words were slow, seething and incredulous "—not?"

His expression spoke volumes; he was staring down at her as though she were an idiotic child, too stupid to even comprehend the situation.

Hermione jerked her chin up and met his eyes. She stood up sharply, unable to calmly sit beside him any longer. "Because I don't want to die alone, Severus! That—that's the most likely outcome of all; no matter where I go, I'll probably die there. All the—all the family I've got left is here, and at least—if I stay in England, they'll be there—when I—" her mouth twisted "—when I go."

Her voice nearly failed her as she said the last word. She drew a ragged breath and turned on her heel, rushing out the door.

She walked rapidly down the empty corridor, biting her lip savagely to maintain her composure as she headed towards the library. She made it halfway there before suddenly changing her mind.

She went outside.

There were other students in the courtyard, and Hermione hesitated as she caught sight of them. The adrenaline rush that had prompted her flight was already fading.

She was so tired.

She stood wavering in the doorway before cutting right and descending the narrow steps leading to the harbor where the First Years banked after sailing across the Lake from Hogsmeade Station. The little boats were all pulled up the shore and lay upturned on the pebbly beach.

Hermione peered up at the towering castle behind her. The stone walls were reddish in the light of the summer sunset.

She sat gingerly on the hull of one of the little boats. It seemed so much smaller than she remembered in First Year.

Sitting in the boat as an eleven year old, she'd been sure that Hogwarts was the beginning of everything for her. A place of her own where she'd be accepted, and all her oddness would be regarded as special rather than other.

Not so special though, in the end.

Still "other."

Always a little out of place, no matter which world she chose.

The Black Lake was smooth and clear as glass, and Hermione sat still as a statue, looking at it.

The world would keep turning when she was gone. A new school year. New students ferried across the lake. A new class for Severus to glower at as he said, "You are here to learn the subtle science and exact art of potion-making."

Harry would be married. Maybe someday he'd have a daughter and name her "Hermione."

A second daughter most likely.

He'd be sure to name his first daughter after his mum. Or he'd use Hermione as a middle name.

She was always going to come second to Lily Potter.

She gave a little choke of laughter and then burst into tears.

She buried her face in her hands and sobbed and sobbed until she couldn't breathe, and she felt as though she'd wept out every drop of emotion inside her body.

Except her rage. She never, ever seemed to stop being angry.

Her chest hitched and stuttered as she sat, wiping away her tears and then crying more after she'd thought she was done.

She slipped off the boat onto the pebbled beach and sat with her knees drawn up, resting her head on them as she kept gasping sobs and trying to breathe.

Finally, when she had a headache from it and felt so drained she thought she might faint, she stopped.

Her arm was throbbing; sharp, needle-like searing radiated with every pulse of her heart, and she peeled off the bandages to stare at it.

It was no longer cruel and reddish. The curse had bleached her blood into almost clear liquid. The cuts were pale, barely pinkish white.

Mudblood.

It was an ironic side-effect for Bellatrix to have turned her blood translucent. Not muddy at all.

Or maybe it had been intention. Pure blood to kill her.

She pulled fresh gauze out of her pocket and pressed it against the cuts, resting her hand against them for several minutes, and waiting for the pain to subside before she wrapped fresh bandages around her arm.

As she was tucking the end of the bandages neatly above her elbow, she heard the crunching sound of gravel underfoot and looked to find Severus at the bottom of the stairs, staring across the beach towards her.

She pulled her sleeve down over her arm and sat looking back at him on the dimming shore.

His mouth was pursed, and after a minute he walked across and stopped beside her.

"A privacy charm may be advisable in the future," he said. "This is a visible beach."

Hermione blinked and looked away, staring across the lake. Her eyes were sore from crying, and it was growing colder. She could feel the wet spots her tears had left on her shirt and skirt.

"I'll be gone soon. It will hardly matter."

Severus sighed, and the gravel cracked under his shoes as he shifted his weight. "Your friends wouldn't go with you?"

Hermione licked her lips and continued looking out across the placid, darkening water. "Harry's getting married to Ginny this autumn. Marrying her is everything he's ever wanted. And Ron's—" her voice trailed off, and she was quiet for a moment. "He tends to disappear—when things are too much for him. He doesn't—" she swallowed. "He doesn't always last in a long haul. He's still having a hard time with Fred's death. I think he'd find a reason to leave—if it got difficult."

She drew a quick breath and looked down. "I would probably be difficult."

"You haven't asked any of them," Severus said.

It was an observation, not a question.

"No," she said, her voice calm. "I don't want to ask anyone to upend their life and go with me for some indefinite amount of time in order to potentially just—" her stomach twisted into a painful knot, "—watch me die."

Severus was silent for several seconds.

"I don't recall you having any objection to doing the equivalent for Mr Potter."

Hermione pressed her lips together and looked up, meeting his eyes. "He didn't ask. I offered."

"Ah," was all Severus said as he stared down at her.

Hermione forced a thin smile and nodded. "Yes."

She stood up, straightened her robes, and started towards the steps. She was halfway across the beach when Severus spoke again.

"That is the hill you intend to die on?" His voice was barely more than a whisper, but laced with enough acid to sink into her bones. "Asking. You'd sooner waste away and die in a hospice while your 'family' weeps over you fading corpse than ask anyone to go with you?"

Hermione froze and turned. He was standing beside the boat, glaring at her with a venomous expression on his face.

It seemed his rage had finally returned.

She felt too drained from crying to muster much of a response.

She shrugged a shoulder and looked down. "Dying is my most likely end no matter where I go or who is or isn't with me. I could drag Harry and Ron across the Atlantic with me. They'd go if I asked them to." She looked up and met his eyes. "They would. They'd follow me anywhere I asked them to go—if I asked. They'd sit by me, smiles plastered on their faces, and keep telling me I'm going to survive because I'm a fighter and that they know I'll never give up. And—and they'd keep saying it, and saying it to me until I'm dead."

She released a heavy breath, shaking her head. "That's not how I want to go. I don't want to tell everyone there's a chance again when there really isn't. I don't have the energy to be hopeful anymore." She gave a dry, mirthless laugh. "Maybe I'm just less of a fighter than everyone thinks I am, but I'm done now. I ran out of fight months ago."

Severus' expression didn't soften in the slightest. Her stomach twisted in a guilty knot.

She sighed. "When I—" her words broke off. "When you changed your mind about—" she paused, not sure what she could call their affair, "—about our—"

She didn't want to call it anything.

"When you changed your mind about us, I assumed it was because I was someone who didn't require any kind of commitment on your part, and that was why you changed your mind." She looked down at her shoes, swallowing. "And—and that was fine; because I didn't expect to be here long enough to mind it." She sighed. "I didn't realise that you expected me to survive."

She drew a deep breath. "I know this feels like—I realise now that you—"

She balled her hands into fists until she could feel her nails biting into her palms.

"I'm not—" The words caught in her throat, her tongue curdling in her mouth. "I'm not Lily Potter," she finally said.

A breeze swept across the lake as she said it, cutting through her clothes and whipping her hair across her face.

The rage emanating from Severus suddenly sharpened and grew icy.

"No. You are not." His voice was not soft; it was rasping and deathly cold.

His tone sent a shiver through her gut and her skin prickled, but Hermione squared her shoulders and brushed her hair back from her face as she met his enraged eyes.

"I'm not," she said, her voice steady. "I'm not anything like her, not really. I'm Hermione Granger, and you've never liked me. If I wasn't 'a tragically young and bright Muggle-born witch dying before her time', you'd remember that. You'll realise again someday, I'm not ever going to be the person you lo—"

Severus' expression grew so dangerous that Hermione's voice died in her throat.

"Lost," she said instead.

She inhaled. "No matter what happens, you won't bring back the person you actually want."

There. She'd said it.

He stood frozen for another moment, staring at her. His face was growing steadily pale with rage. When he finally spoke, his lip curled. "Do you think that because Potter was without even the slightest sense of consideration that you now have a right to claim knowledge and understanding of me, or my past?"

He drew herself up like a serpent readying to strike. His rage was explosive. "You're no different than he is. Another self-absorbed, self-righteous Gryffindor. It's a pity I failed to realise it sooner." He sneered, his eyes cruel and burning. "I would never have wasted a moment of my time on you. You certainly weren't worth any of it."

His words struck hard; burrowing into her chest as though each word were a piece of shrapnel.

Her throat closed, and she stared at him wide-eyed as the blood drained from her face.

He glared at her, his face pale and his eyes radiating malice.

He didn't look down or away as if he had any slight or belated sense of regret for saying it to her.

Hermione slowly nodded.

"I'm sorry then." Her voice was barely more than a whisper. "I really am. You're right, I should have withdrawn from the beginning."

There was nothing else to say.

She didn't stay and wait for him to verbally flay her further. She turned, moving slowly across the beach towards the castle, where the burnished stone walls were fading in the dusk.

Her jaw and hands were trembling uncontrollably as she looked up at the winding steps. It was going to be such a long walk up to the courtyard and back to her room. Longer than she thought she could manage.

Perhaps she'd go stay in the hospital ward until departure on Saturday morning. Madam Pomfrey would let her have a bed. No Severus. No Leaving Feast. No speeches.

She moved forward, feeling as though there were a hollow carved in the centre of her chest as she tried to breathe.

At least she wouldn't have to live with this new wound for long.

She'd expected he'd say something awful if they finally fought, but hearing it was worse than she'd imagined. Or maybe she cared more than she'd been willing to admit to herself.

It didn't really matter. Either way, it was all over now.

"Wait."

Severus' voice interrupted her when she was nearing the stone steps.

She ignored him.

He'd made his attempts. He'd tried to manipulate her, to argue with her, and to shame and insult her into cooperation.

Now he was just angry.

She didn't want to hear what else he could say about her. She was sure there were all kinds of cruel things he could think to say now. She didn't want to know what they all were.

"Wait!" His voice was forceful.

She kept walking.

She just needed to reach the hospital.

"Hermione…" his voice was fractured and rasping, "wait. Please."

Hermione stopped mid-stride at the sound of her name and turned before she could stop herself. He was coming quickly across the beach towards her, his face still pale.

There was a raw and desperate ravenousness in his expression that she'd never seen before.

"If... I went with you," he asked, "would you go?"

"No," she said immediately, without letting herself even consider it.

He didn't pause at her answer. He kept coming towards her, his footsteps rapid and his expression growing more intent.

"No," she said again, her voice more controlled. "I don't want you to. I would never ask that."

Severus continued to move towards her, his expression unyielding.

"I'm offering." His voice was quiet but unrelenting.

She backed away, her foot finding the first step as he closed in on her. She backed up the steps and he followed her.

"No. Don't…." she finally managed to say, the words vibrating with hurt. She tried to push him away, her voice growing vicious. "Don't offer! I don't need you to waste more of your time on me."

"Hermione." He caught her by the upper arm, his fingers wrapping firmly around her arms as she tried to pull away. Their faces were almost perfectly level. "Hermione..."

"Don't—" she said again, her voice shaking. "Don't you dare do this now. I can't—"

His gaze was fastened on her, and he drew her forward to the edge of the step.

The rest of the words caught in her throat.

His expression was intent and predatory. He had that hungry look of determination she'd come to recognise. His fingers curled possessively around her shoulders, and he pulled her even closer.

The gesture was unmistakably intimate as they stood halfway up the steps.

Anyone could see them.

She tried to pull away, but his hold tightened, his thumbs caressing her shoulders as he refused to let her go, pulling her back.

"Hermione," he said again. His voice sounded dragged from the depths. "I am offering. I do think you can still survive this curse. I believe that."

His black eyes were bright with intensity as he spoke. He was gripping her in that desperate, covetous way of his, drawing her closer and closer.

Anyone who bothered to look down towards the beach would see Hermione in his arms and the open, starved expression on his face.

He wasn't even trying to be careful.

It was as if he didn't care at all about being fired, about the scandal being seen could cause, about the damage it could do to his reputation.

"No..." She shook her head, trying to draw back. "Severus, I'm not Lil—"

"I know who you are." He pulled her even closer, his eyes wide and anguished, locked on her face.

"Please, Hermione," he said. His voice was low and strained but still forceful with longing. He rested his forehead against hers for a moment as his hands slid up her shoulders and cradled her face. He drew back just enough to study her. "I cannot lose you. Please. Let me go with you. I am offering."

Hermione stared at him, her heart pounding and her arm nearly numb with pain. Her chest felt compressed until she couldn't manage to speak.

She tried to say his name again, but her voice failed. He was gripping possessively, his expression half-mad with desperation.

She inhaled unsteadily and managed to nod.

Severus' face broke with relief.

"Yes," she finally managed to say, her voice shaking. "Yes. I'll go with you."

* * *

**Updates weekly on Sunday/Monday.**


	10. Epilogue

"Are you sure about this?" Ron asked for the umpteenth time.

Hermione sighed and nodded, staring at him where he stood shoulder-to-shoulder beside Harry. "Yes. I'm sure."

"It's just," Ron stuffed his hands in his pockets and glowered across the room. "It's Snape. I didn't really think you'd—you sure you want to go somewhere with him?"

Hermione glanced over towards Severus; a tall, thin figure, shrouded by his heavy cloak, glaring impatiently at the party of well-wishers who had come to see Hermione off.

"He understands my curse better than anyone. If I'm not in a condition that's competent to make medical decisions, he'd be the best person to make them for me. I trust him."

Harry stood staring at her with his bright green eyes. His tongue darted out to wet his lips as he studied her.

"He's a git," Ron said, grimacing.

Hermione shook her head without looking away from Harry. "A bit, but not really."

Harry's eyebrows furrowed, and he glanced towards Ginny. "You know... if you want me and Ron to come with you, you just have to say the word and we will."

Ron swallowed and nodded in emphatic agreement.

Hermione stood for studying them both for several seconds. "No, Harry," she shook her head, "Ron, I'm not asking either of you to do that."

Harry nodded slowly, his expression uncertain. "Well, just know that all you need to do is ask."

Hermione forced a bright smile. "I know."

She looked down, pulling her sleeve carefully over the bandages on her arm and drew a steadying breath before lifting her chin. "Take care of yourselves, you two. I put in a lot of work keeping you both alive. Don't you dare die doing anything stupid while I'm in America. I'll never forgive you. I mean it."

They both nodded and then stepped forward almost simultaneously and crushed her in a hug. She could feel Harry's chest hitching as he gripped her.

She buried her face between them and hugged them both fiercely.

"You're going to come back, right?" Harry's voice was thick and muffled near her ear.

Hermione was silent for a moment, her eyes fastened on Severus' face as he stood waiting for her.

"I'm going to try," she said, closing her eyes for a moment. "I'm going to do my best."

She let go and stepped back.

"Course you will," Harry said with a forced, thin-lipped smile of his own.

Ron's eyes were swimming and he scrubbed his face with his sleeve.

"I've got to go now," Hermione said, glancing towards the clock on the wall.

"If that greasy git does anything you don't like, send us a letter and we'll hex him into the ocean for you." Ron was back to eyeing Severus with great suspicion.

"I'll keep it in mind," Hermione said dryly.

She hugged everyone goodbye again and again until her arms began to feel weak.

"Miss Granger, the portkey departs in one minute if you can possibly tear yourself away from the repetitive embraces of your friends." Severus' cool, disdainful voice invaded the tearful party like a bucket of ice water.

Ron stiffened, his hand reaching for his wand, and he angrily opened his mouth to reply.

Hermione laid a hand on his wrist. "I have to go, Ron."

Severus stood gripping their bags and extended his other hand towards Hermione. She took it and stepped towards the Ministry portkey.

Harry stood, the Weasleys and a few members of the Order and DA beside him. Concealed beneath the fabric of Severus' cloak, Hermione entwined their fingers, squeezing his hand tightly as she turned and smiled at everyone.

She waved one final time before taking hold of the portkey.

There was a sharp, wrenching tug behind her navel and they both vanished.

The sheets of the Nordhelm Clinic in upstate New York were pristine. Perfect creases. There was not even a speck of dust to be found in the room. The beds, walls, and furniture were all blindingly white and neatly straightened, just like the teeth of the American nurses and healers who flitted down the hall and tended to grin unrelentingly.

Severus was starkly out of place with his black robes and unapologetically dour expression.

Hermione felt equally foreign as she sat in her bed staring at the garden outside her window. She looked down at the sheets again, and her toes scrunched under the sheets as she tried to relieve some of the vibrating tension trapped inside her.

Her stomach was twisted into a multitude of anxious knots.

She pressed her right hand against her left forearm, but there was no comfort in the touch. The head healer at the clinic had placed a structured cast embedded with monitor spells on Hermione's arm upon her arrival the week before. There were diagnostic readings from it projected onto the wall beside her bed, and Severus' eyes tended to be glued to them.

She looked down at her hands for several seconds before drawing a deep breath and looking up.

Severus was staring at the door, still and impassive as a statue.

Hermione's lips moved, but it was as though there were iron bands locked around her chest, forcing out all the oxygen in her lungs. No sound came out.

She gripped her left arm tighter and tried again.

"Severus."

He instantly turned to look at her, his black eyes locking on her face. Her throat thickened, and she gripped her arm more tightly

"This is it," she finally managed to say. "Today's the day."

He gave an almost imperceptible nod, his expression was unchanging.

She forced a smile. "Severus, if I don't—"

"Don't," he said, his voice cold.

She froze and stared at him for a moment before shaking her head. "No. I want to say all of this once. If this is the last time I speak to you, I want you to know—"

"I don't want to hear it." His tone was implacable as he cut her off.

Hermione swallowed and looked down, straightening the sleeves of her hospital robes.

After a minute, she looked back up. He was still staring at her, his expression unrelentingly obstinate.

She drew a deep breath, her shoulders rising and squaring. "Don't you want to hear me say it once?"

"I don't want to hear anything from you now," he said, his voice flat. His expression was closed and his black eyes emotionless.

Her chest tightened, and she dug her fingers in against the hard material of the cast. "You can't just assume. Statistically speaking, my odds are—"

"I am aware of how statistics work," he said, cutting her off. His eyes were flashing with visible irritation.

He stood abruptly, turning towards the door. Hermione's heart dropped, and she thought he was going to walk out and leave her.

She pressed her lips together, watching him. He stared at the door, straightening the collar of his robes, and inhaling audibly through his teeth.

He shifted away, and her mouth went dry, but then he pivoted abruptly and came over to her bed, seating himself on the edge of it, and prying her right hand away from the place where she was gripping her cast. Her fingertips and nails had turned white from nervously squeezing her forearm tighter and tighter.

He held her hand in his long, pale fingers, his thumb tracing lightly along the tendons running across the back of her hand.

"We're not saying goodbye today," he said without looking up at her. "This curse is only a chapter in your life. When it's concluded..." the words grew thin and strained, he cleared his throat.

"When it's concluded," he said again, his voice dry, "I expect you to live a very long and insufferable life—to the point that I am forced to question many of my choices."

He looked up at her, and the corner of his mouth twitched, giving the barest hint of a smile when their eyes met. "I sincerely believe that."

He looked down again and rested his other hand on top of hers. "Anything you wish to tell me can wait a few more days."

Hermione pulled her hand free and reached up, pressing her palm against his cheek.

"I want you to hear me say it," she said.

He sat back just enough for his dark, intrusive eyes to meet hers. There was an obstinate and unapologetically greedy expression written across his face. "I will."

As he said it, the door clicked and opened.

The head healer entered the room. "Miss Granger, are you ready?"

Hermione's mouth was too dry to speak. She gripped Severus' hand and nodded.

There was heaviness everywhere. Darkness.

Everything was black.

Hermione knew she needed to breathe, but the very cells in her body felt leaden. Everything weighed too much. Her lungs were being crushed and were too heavy to expand. She struggled but couldn't even manage to make her fingers twitch.

There was a slow, rounded noise that kept repeating in a vague, monotonous rhythm, muffled and interspersed beneath a deeper, melodic hum that was far away.

She needed to breathe, but it was as though she couldn't remember how to. Was there a trick for making the air go in?

Her whole sense of being seemed disjointed.

There was a vague impression of light in front of her, in the same direction as the distant, mumbling sounds. She tried to open her eyes, but her eyelids were uncooperative. They fluttered and parted just enough to glimpse blinding whiteness.

Her eyes slid shut again.

Limbo was a white mist Harry had said.

The rounded, repeating sound seemed to grow faster.

She tried to move. Why couldn't she move?

She struggled, trying to force her eyes open, and finally managed to part them enough to peer through her lashes. There seemed to be nothing but bright white around her. It hurt to look at.

Everything was so heavy.

She squinted.

Something dark and vague in shape appeared in the furthest reach of her vision, blurring as it shifted and moved overhead.

She tried to force herself to breathe, feeling as though her body were pinned down and crushed under a boulder. Her chest seemed to barely rise. She tried again.

The noises surrounding her grew gradually clearer and slowly decipherable.

The monotonous repeating sound was a heartbeat monitor. Her heartbeat.

The melodic hum was the rise and fall of a voice.

She forced herself to breathe again and felt her fingers twitch against cool, crisp fabric.

The dark shape overhead drew nearer, becoming more distinct as she peered up at it, trying to see clearly.

Black hair and eyes.

Pale skin.

Her eyes widened.

Severus was at her bedside, staring down at her.

He was smiling.

* * *

**The End**


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